Rosie Turner-Bisset

CREATIVE TEACHING:

HISTORY IN THE PRIMARY

CLASSROOM

David Fulton Publishers LtdThe Chiswick Centre, 414 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5TF

www.fultonpublishers.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by David Fulton Publishers10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Note: The right of Rosie Turner-Bisset to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by herin accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

David Fulton Publishers is a division of Granada Learning Limited, part of ITV plc.

Copyright © Rosie Turner-Bisset 2005

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1 84312 115 8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or trans-mitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without theprior permission of the publishers.

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, SuffolkPrinted and bound in Great Britain

Acknowledgements vi

Preface vii

1 Creative teaching 1

2 History in the primary curriculum 15

3 Artefacts 31

4 Using written sources 46

5 Visual images 59

6 The historical environment: maps, sites, visits and museums 69

7 Storytelling: ‘putting the book down’ 85

8 Drama and role-play 102

9 Simulations and games 112

10 Music and dance 123

11 Classroom discourse and generic teaching approaches 138

12 Ticking the boxes 143

13 Putting it all together: planning and creativity 160

Appendix 177

References 184

Index 188

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Several people have helped either through inspiration or practically in the creation ofthis book. The first people to acknowledge are three heroes of mine from the NuffieldPrimary History Project: John Fines, Jon Nichol and Jacqui Dean. The late John Fineswas a wonderful teacher and storyteller: the source of much inspiration for the way Iteach now. He is greatly missed but lives on in the memories of those fortunateenough to have experienced his teaching. Jon Nichol has been a colleague, mentor andfriend for the past ten years, and without him I would not have learned so much abouthigh-quality history teaching so quickly. Jacqui Dean is a marvellous innovativeteacher, from whom I have also learned a great deal. All three have been instrumentalin my development as a teacher and teacher educator. It was a privilege to be asked toresearch with them, and to work with these colleagues on in-service courses for teach-ers. I extend my thanks to teachers on these courses, many of whom were excellentexamples of creative teachers. I also thank the teachers who allowed me into theirclassrooms to carry out curriculum development and action research. One of thefactors that has made this book possible has been the award of a National TeachingFellowship, which has given me time to work on projects such as this. I thank mycolleagues at the University of Hertfordshire for their support during the process ofapplication and award. In particular I would like to thank Mary Read for her contin-uing support over the years. Much practical support has been given by the publishers,especially by Tracey Alcock. Finally, thanks go to my family for enduring the writingprocess.

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‘Only connect!’(E. M. Forster, Howards End, ch. 22)

Possibly this quotation is well used to the point of becoming a cliché: yet it is com-pletely apt for a book about creative teaching. The concept of creativity presentedin this book is one of connecting different frames of reference to create humour, dis-covery or works of art. It is about opening the mind to perceive things in alternativeways. The concept of creative teaching similarly is about using those connectionsto help children learn through a range of representations, teaching approaches andactivities, which enable children to be active agents in their own learning. Throughbeing in role in approaches such as storytelling, drama, simulations and songs, theyexperience aspects of past historical situations as ‘players in the game’. In this sense,both children and teachers are being creative.

All this happens within the structures of history as a discipline: the combinationof historical enquiry, interpretation and exercise of the historical imagination to re-create the past while remaining true to the surviving evidence. In faithfulness to theumbrella nature of history, concerned with all aspects of past societies, examples ofcurriculum history are given, not merely integrated by theme or topic, but by concept,process, skill and content. There are more connections, between aspects of differentsubjects, which those subjects have in common, such as enquiry in history, geographyand science, or sequencing in history, English, maths, PE and dance.

The book is structured around the pedagogical repertoire for teaching history: allthose approaches and activities which teachers can use to connect their learners to thesubject matter to be taught. The intention is that each teaching approach receivesmore than a few lines: usually a whole chapter is devoted to each approach. Throughthe detailed narratives for each approach, teachers can gain access, for example, notonly to the practicalities of how to do storytelling, but also to underpinning theoryand to the pedagogical reasoning of planning for such teaching.

Finally the book is by way of homage to those three great heroes of creativeteaching: John Fines, Jon Nichol and Jacqui Dean. Their work was illustrated in the

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excellent Teaching Primary History (Fines and Nichol, 1997) which is now alas out ofprint. If you can get hold of a copy of this book, you will find it an invaluable sourceof teaching ideas and approaches for history in primary schools. In the meantime,I offer up this book as emulation and adaptation, and as a source of understandingcreative teaching. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

Rosie Turner-BissetSeptember 2004

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Examples of creative teaching in history

Cameo 1: Local study

A teacher working in tandem with a colleague is doing the local study unit. They haverecently taken their classes to St Albans Abbey for combined history, geography,religious studies and art work. At the Abbey the children undertook history/RE trailsand art workshops with Abbey staff, and drew maps of the Abbey’s layout. Back in theclassroom, the teacher gathers her Year 3 class on the carpet. She tells them the storyof Athelstan, the medieval peasant with a problem, and the Abbey tax collector whoupset his plans by calling for his tithe (see Chapter 6). Just before the end of the story,she pauses and asks the children where Athelstan might have hidden his money. Theyhave one minute to discuss it in pairs. She takes feedback quickly from the pairs,praises the children for good ideas, and finishes the story. She shares with them somedocuments from the Abbey which list the different goods sold in the market: butter,cheese, vegetables, apples and pears, meat, fish, leather goods, wool, linen, silk, cloth-ing, basketry, jewellery, pottery and glassware. She divides the class into groups tomake paper versions of these goods. There are three or four children to each stall mak-ing goods. All children have access to a loan collection from the library on medievaltimes so that they can make their goods look ‘right’. They have access to paper, pensand crayons. When they have made enough, they rearrange the room as a marketplaceand the groups set out their stalls. They may carry on making goods while sellingthem. The children can take it in turns to go around and barter goods with other stallholders, while other children in their group mind their stall and make more goods.

Suddenly the teacher announces that the tax collector will be coming around in amoment to collect his tithe (one-tenth of all they have made or sold). The childrenfrantically search for places to hide some of their goods, just as Athelstan did in thestory. Some put them in storage trays, in folders, or in exercise books. Others,despairing at the last minute, sit on them. As the teacher comes around, each grouphas worked out one-tenth to give to her. There is much ‘innocent’ talk of ‘It’s been abad week, sir, haven’t made much’ or ‘One of my cows has been ill’. After this the

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Creative teaching

teacher signals that the market is over. The children groan: they were having fun!Everyone helps to tidy up and restore the classroom to its normal layout. The teachersettles the children on the carpet and ask what they have learned. Hands shoot up:

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● They didn’t use money in medieval times: they bartered instead;

● The Abbey took money from ordinary people to pay for building;

● What they ate in those times;

● What they wore in those times;

● They had pottery and glass;

● Shoes were made of leather;

● A tithe means one-tenth;

● People traded goods and swapped, say, fish for clothing; or meat for pottery;

● People worked hard for themselves and their family, then the tax collectorcame around and took some of their money;

● What houses were built of.

Cameo 2:The Victorians

A teacher is studying the lives of people at different levels of society with a Year 6class. She gathers the children on the carpet and tells the story of Martha, from Lark

Rise to Candleford, going for her first job as a housemaid at the age of 12. After thestorytelling, the teacher asks for volunteers to make a freeze frame of part of the story,the moment when the door is opened to the children, and they confront the lady ofthe house. She then reads with them a typed section of the chapter from the bookfrom which this comes and asks them to highlight in one colour all the words whichare to do with time, and in another colour all the words which are the jobs Marthawould have to do. She tells them that this is a source of primary evidence: it comesfrom a book of memories written by the grown-up who was Martha’s friend as a child.They are going to look at two more sources. She asks them what they would do if theywere going to cook a meal and needed to know how. The children suggest usingone of Delia Smith’s cookery books. She tells them that in Victorian times, if a newlymarried lady wanted to know how to run a house and treat her servants, she woulduse a manual of household management: an instruction book similar to the recipebooks of today. She reads with them the next source of primary evidence: an extractfrom Cassell’s Book of Household Management. The extract outlines the duties ofa housemaid. She asks the children to tell her words they do not understand andexplains them. She asks also if they could get up at 6 a.m. every day without beingcalled. Most of the children who were bussed to school thought that 6 a.m. was not a

problem, but getting up without being called was! They then carry out the sameexercise of highlighting words to do with time and jobs.

The third source of evidence is a song, ‘The Serving-maid’s Holiday’, which tells ofall the jobs a housemaid had to do before her half-day holiday when she would go outand meet her young man. The teacher sings it twice, with the children learning thetune the first time and singing all together the second time. The same highlightingexercise is carried out. The teacher gives them a grid with three columns, one for eachsource of evidence. She checks that the children understand chronological order, andasks them to write down in each column the jobs each person in the evidence had todo, in order of time. During this time she works with the two least able groups whocan do the task since it has been carefully structured, but who need encouragement tocomplete it. When the grid has been completed, she asks the children to write about‘What was it like to be a housemaid in Victorian times?’ Some children adapt the title;all produce some writing (an example of children’s work is given in Figure 1.1). Themain historical learning from this lesson included:

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● for the children to have some understanding of what it was like to be a house-maid in Victorian times;

● for the children to carry out historical enquiry and interpretation of evidenceusing primary sources;

● for the children to select and organize material for presentation of their inter-pretation in the form of writing.

● for the children to read collectively some challenging texts in different genres;

● to make sense of them;

● to produce high-quality pieces of extended writing.

The main literacy objectives were:

The lesson also involved music in singing the song, and drama in creating the freezeframe of part of the story. This work occupied one whole afternoon and part of aliteracy hour the following day to finish the stories.

Cameo 3: Games and simulation

A teacher has been studying the Tudors with her Year 4/Year 5 class. They have donesome work on analysing a portrait of Drake and are now discussing Drake’s voyagearound the world. The teacher puts a large map of the world on the board, and givesthe children a sheet with a chronicle of the voyage. They read this as a shared text,

one child reading each line. For each location in the world that Drake went to, she asksfor a volunteer to come and point to the place on the map. The child then puts amarker with the name of the place on the map and the date he was there. After this,she tells the class that, working in fours, they are going to design and make boardgames of Drake’s voyages, but first they have to do a little planning and thinking. Shehas ready a number of board games: Monopoly, Game of Life, Journey ThroughBritain, Explore Europe, Scotland Yard, and Cluedo. She asks for volunteers to explaineach game briefly. They discuss what the games have in common, and, with thechildren contributing, the teacher draws up on the board a list in two columns:

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Figure 1.1 Children’s work:Victorian maidservant

(1) those items their game must have; and (2) those items their game might have.Each game must have a board, playing pieces, dice or spinners, a set of rules, and a setof playing instructions. They can have ‘chance cards’, ‘treasure cards’, ‘captured ships’or any other extras they need for their game. Their board can be highly decorated andthey can design a box for its storage. Later the games will be trialled and tested byother classes.

There is a buzz of excitement as the groups settle with their list of items, and startto plan and allocate roles and tasks. The teacher hands out a prepared sheet whichgives a timescale for completion of the game, working one afternoon a week. At theend of the period, she has a reporting back session: one child from each group has toreport back to the class. She has already trained the class in group work: each child isready to be the resources manager (who fetches and tidies all resources), a time/orderkeeper (who keeps an eye on time and sorts out disputes), a recorder (who recordsin writing what is done) and a reporter/observer (who reports back to the class andobserves the group work, achievement and behaviour, giving a score for each ofthese). The work continues over the half-term unit, occupying design technologytime. In history they move on to considering the question: ‘Was Drake a hero or apirate?’, using their knowledge from the board game work and documentary sourcesprovided by the teacher.

The scheme of work described in this cameo represents learning over a period ofsix or seven weeks. It is a complex period of learning and presents an oppositeview of learning to the kind detectable in official government documents or inOfsted guidance for inspectors, which suggests that learning is simple, uncompli-cated and almost mechanical in nature. The official view would seem to indicate thatthe teacher writes down the learning objectives on the board, ensures the childrenknow what they are, the children do the learning activities, and hey presto, theyachieve the learning objectives! Doubtless some learning occurs in single lessons, but,just as often, complex learning occurs over a period of time. In the Drake activity,clearly one learning objective for history would be to deepen the children’s factualand conceptual knowledge of Drake’s voyage (range and depth of historical under-standing) before moving on to judging his achievements and whether he could beconsidered a hero or a pirate (historical enquiry and interpretation of evidence). Thiswas to be achieved via knowledge transfer from one genre of text (the timeline) toanother (the board game). There are also learning objectives one can write for geog-raphy (the use of maps), design technology (the design and making of the games),literacy (writing in the instruction genre) and PHSE (co-operation and collaborativegroup work).

All of the above cameos are examples of creative teaching. What makes them sowill be explored in this chapter, which is in two sections. The first deals with thenature of creativity; the second moves from there into defining creative teaching.There is an analysis of how the three cameos are examples of creative teaching inhistory. Through an understanding of creative teaching one can aim to teach

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high-quality, challenging history, which exercises proper historical skills andprocesses and promotes the engagement of the historical imagination. The remainderof the book deals with how to achieve this aim.

An explanation of creativity

Creativity is a concept which needs some explaining. This explanation starts witha joke:

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During the French revolution, hundreds of people were guillotined. One day, threemen were led out to die. One was a lawyer, one was a doctor, and the third was anengineer.

The lawyer was to die first. He was led to the guillotine, the attending priest blessed him,and he knelt with his head on the guillotine.The blade was released, but stopped halfwaydown its path.The priest, seeing an opportunity, quickly said, ‘Gentlemen, God hasspoken, and said this man is to be spared; we cannot kill him.’The executioner agreed,and the lawyer was set free.

The doctor was next. He was blessed by the priest, then knelt and placed his head on theguillotine.The blade was released, and again stopped halfway down.Again the priestintervened: ‘Gentlemen, God has again spoken; we cannot kill this man.’The executioneragreed, and the doctor was set free.

At last it was the engineer’s turn. He was blessed by the priest, and knelt, but before heplaced his head on the guillotine he looked up. Suddenly, he leapt to his feet and cried,‘Oh, I see the problem!’

This joke acts as a kind of representation of the interpretation of creativity presentedin this book, and as a playful summary. How this joke works and what it has to dowith creativity will be explored briefly in this chapter.

Currently creativity seems to be something of a buzz-word in educational dis-course. Some people think creativity is synonymous with designing and makingthings, or expressing oneself through the arts (e.g. Abbs, 1985, 1987, 1989). A surveyof teachers and lecturers found that there was ‘a pervasive view that creativity is onlyrelevant to the arts’ (Fryer, 1996, p. 79). While there may be creativity in these activi-ties, this is too narrow a conceptualisation of the whole business of creativity.A broader definition is given in the Report by the National Advisory Committee onCreative and Cultural Education (NACCCE, 1999) entitled All Our Futures. This Reportconcentrated on creativity in children’s learning and curriculum experience, andoffered some useful definitions. One problem is that the word ‘creativity’ is used indifferent ways and in different contexts. Thus, as the authors of the Report point out,it has an elusive definition:

The problems of definition lie in its particular associations with the arts, in the complexnature of creative activity itself, and in the variety of theories that have been developed toexplain it.

(NACCCE, 1999, p. 27)

They favoured a more comprehensive scope to creativity, believing in its importancein advances in sciences, technology, politics, business and in all areas of everydaylife as well as in the arts. They did not regard creativity as an elite activity andbelieved that it could be taught. Their definition of creativity is: ‘Imaginativeactivity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value’(NACCCE, 1999, p. 29). In their account of using imagination, one useful notion isthat of imaginative activity being a form of mental play – serious play directedtowards some creative purpose. They refer also to analogy and unusual combinationsof ideas:

Creative insights often occur when existing ideas are combined or reinterpreted in unex-pected ways, or when they are applied in areas where they are not normally associated.Often this arises by making unusual connections, seeing analogies and relationshipsbetween ideas and objects that have not previously been related.

(NACCCE, 1999, p. 29)

The NACCCE states that creativity is purposeful and that creative activity musthave some value. There are dead-ends in the creative process: ideas and designs thatdo not work. It also stresses the importance of originality, whether that may be judgedas original, as against a person’s previous work, relative, in relation to a person’s peergroup, or historic, in terms of outcomes within a particular field.

Books aimed at encouraging creativity in the primary sector (e.g. Beetlestone,1998a; Duffy, 1998) do embrace the notion of creativity across arts and sciences, andoffer much in terms of how to achieve creative teaching, yet they are less clear asto the nature of creativity, preferring multi-stranded definitions or constructs. Forexample, Beetlestone argues that creativity involves:

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● The ability to see things in fresh ways;

● Learning from past experiences and relating this learning to new situations;

● Thinking along unorthodox lines and breaking barriers;

● Using non-traditional approaches to solving problems;

● Going further than the information given;

● Creating something unique or original.

(Beetlestone, 1998b, p. 143)

There are also official views of creativity. The QCA has a website devoted tocreativity. Its sections include:

It adopts the definition of creativity given by the NACCCE, focusing on imagination,purpose, originality and value. This is helpful as far as it goes, but it still does notdefine creativity very clearly. The emphasis of this website is on promoting creativityin children, rather than creative teaching. For how to spot creativity, it suggests:‘When pupils are thinking and behaving creatively in the classroom, you are likely tosee them:

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● What is creativity?

● Why is creativity so important?

● How can you spot creativity?

● How can you promote creativity?

● Examples of creativity in action.

● Questioning and challenging

● Making connections and seeing relationships

● Envisaging what might be

● Exploring ideas, keeping options open

● Reflecting critically on ideas, actions and outcomes

● Thinking independently.

(http://www.ncaction.org.uk/creativity/index.html)

It also gives suggestions for promoting creativity in children, teams of teachers andteams of managers. Some of the suggestions would apply to any good teaching;others are closest to some of the teaching approaches suggested in this book, but therecontinues to be a fundamental vagueness about creativity on this site.

Koestler’s book on creativity, The Act of Creation (1964), explored a concept ofcreativity based on studies of creative people across all varieties of human endeavour.His analysis dissects humour as a route to understanding the act of creation. In thismajor study, he advanced the theory that all creative activities including artistic orig-inality, scientific discovery and comic inspiration have a basic pattern in common.He called this ‘bisociative thinking’ – ‘a word he coined to distinguish the variousroutines of associative thinking from the creative leap which connects previouslyunconnected frames of reference and makes us experience reality on several planesat once’ (Burt, 1964). The best way of understanding this is through the analysis ofa joke, in this case the joke at the start of this section (see p. 6). The two frames ofreference for this joke are: the religious belief which assumes that if the guillotinedoes not work, then God is telling us the men deserve to live; and the naturaltendency of an engineer to try to solve technical problems, ultimately at the expense

of his own life and possibly those of the doctor and lawyer too. In a joke, ‘the ascend-ing curve (or narrative tension) is brought to an abrupt end . . . which debunksour dramatic expectations; it comes like a bolt out of the blue, which, so to speak,decapitates the logical development of the situation’ (Koestler, 1964, p. 33). The con-nection of the engineer looking to see where the problem is with the guillotine istotally unexpected. The tension is relieved and explodes in laughter. The humourlies in the unexpectedness of the outcome or linkage between two different framesof reference. One frame of reference is God’s will; the other is the nature of engineers.It is the clash between the two mutually incompatible, yet logically self-consistentframes of reference which explodes the tension. The connection of one of thevictims being an engineer and behaving as engineers do enables us to experiencereality on two planes at once through the bisociation of thinking on two planessimultaneously.

Koestler wrote a great deal about these frames of reference, using a variety of termsto describe them, such as ‘frames of reference’, ‘associative contexts’, ‘types of logic’,‘codes of behaviour’ and ‘universes of discourse’. He chose to use ‘matrices of thought’(and ‘matrices of behaviour’) as a unifying formula. ‘Matrix’ denotes any ability, habitor skill, any pattern of ordered behaviour governed by a ‘code’ of fixed rules. Koestlerstated that all coherent thinking is equivalent to playing a game according to a set ofrules; in disciplined thinking, only one matrix is active at a time. When one’s mindwanders across to other matrices, it happens through bisociation of the two differentmatrices, that original creative jokes, acts or discoveries are made. Koestler showsthis bisociation as two planes at right angles to each other, M1 and M2 (as shown inFigure 1.2).

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Figure 1.2 Bisociation of two matrices (by kind permission of the estate of Arthur Koestler)

The event (L) is the creative act, the joke, or the discovery at the intersection of thetwo matrices. The grouping together of jokes, creative acts and discoveries needsfurther explanation. Koestler presented a triptych of creative activities as a starting-point and unification of ideas for his exploration of creativity (see Figure 1.3). He

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Figure 1.3 The triptych of domains of creativity (by kind permission of the estate of Arthur

Koestler)

states that these domains of creativity shade into each other without sharp bound-aries: humour, discovery and art. The Sage is in the middle, flanked by the Jester onone side and the Artist on the other. Each line across the panel stands for a patternof creative activity: in the first column to make us laugh; in the second to make usunderstand; and in the third to make us marvel. Koestler stresses that the logicalpattern of the creative process is the same in all three cases: the bisociation of ideasfrom different matrices of thought. The emotional climate of each of the three panelsis different however, moving fluidly from slightly aggressive or self-assertive in theleft-hand side, through neutral in the central panel of the scientist’s reasoning, toself-transcending, sympathetic or admiring in the right-hand side. Seeing the jokeand solving the problem are thus related: the ‘Eureka’ cry of Archimedes in its explo-sion of energies is the same effect as laughter following a joke. Koestler gave exam-ples of jokes, scientific discoveries and originality in art as examples of the creativeact within each domain. There is room for only one example in this chapter, so ahistorical/scientific one is presented:

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‘Hero, tyrant of Syracuse and protector of Archimedes, had been given a beautiful crown,allegedly of pure gold, but he suspected that it was adulterated with silver. He askedArchimedes’ opinion.Archimedes knew of course the specific weight of gold – that is tosay, its weight per volume unit. If he could measure the volume of the crown, he wouldknow immediately whether it was pure gold or not; but how on earth is one todetermine the volume of a complicated ornament with all its filigree work.Ah, if only hecould melt it down and measure the liquid gold by the pint, or hammer it into a brick ofhonest rectangular shape, or . . . and so on’ (Koestler, 1964, p. 105). Blocked situationsproduce stress: one’s thoughts run round and round within one matrix without finding asolution.Archimedes was in the habit of taking a daily bath: he knew from several yearsof climbing into baths that the water level rises owing to its displacement by the body,and there must be as much water displaced as there is body immersed. He did not thinkto connect the two matrices, until he was under the stress of finding a solution to Hero’sproblem (see Figure 1.4). M1 was the matrix of the problem of the crown, M2 was thetrain of associations related to taking a bath.The link (L) may have been a verbal or avisual concept: perhaps a visual impression in which the water level was suddenly seen tocorrespond to the volume of the immersed parts of the body and hence to that of thecrown, an image of which would have been lurking in Archimedes’ consciousness as aresult of the continued stress of trying to find an answer to the problem.As Koestler putit: ‘The creative stress resulting from the blocked situation had kept the problem on theagenda, even while the beam of consciousness was drifting along quite another plane’(Koestler, 1964, p. 107).The tension built up by the creative stress was released in thefamous ‘Eureka’ cry.

Creative teaching

As with creativity, some vagueness surrounds the notion of creative teaching. TheNACCCE Report (1999) defines creative teaching in two ways: teaching creatively;

and teaching for creativity. The first of these is dealt with briefly in the Report,namely teachers using imaginative approaches to make learning more interesting,exciting and effective. There is nothing here with which one can take issue, only thatit is rather nebulous and does not go far enough. In teaching for creativity, the Reportstates that there are three related tasks: encouraging, identifying and fostering. Thisis not to reject the importance of these activities, but they tend to cast the teacher inthe role of facilitator. That this is part of the teacher’s role is undeniable, but I wouldargue that there is more to creativity in teaching than this. A clue lies in the followingsentence: ‘Teachers cannot develop the creative abilities of their pupils if their owncreative abilities are suppressed’ (NACCCE, 1999, p. 90). Thus we need to understandwhat might be meant by teachers’ creative abilities, and what a deeper, more in-formed understanding of creativity might have to offer towards our conceptions ofcreativity in teaching.

Some of the literature on creative teaching offers insights such as the depiction ofcreative teachers being innovative, having ownership of the knowledge, being incontrol of the teaching processes involved, and operating within a broad range ofaccepted social values while being attuned to pupil cultures (Woods, 1995). Apartfrom the first of these, innovation, there is nothing peculiar to creativity. I wouldexpect the other three attributes to be present in all good teachers. Beetlestonesuggests that: ‘Creative teaching can be seen as the same as good practice, yet goodpractice is not necessarily creative teaching’ (Beetlestone, 1998a, p. 7).

Presumably creative teaching has some extra dimension which distinguishesit from mere ‘good practice’. Beetlestone states that the creative teacher demon-strates commitment, subject knowledge, knowledge about techniques and skills, and

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Figure 1.4 Bisociation in scientific discovery (by kind permission of the estate of Arthur Koestler)

involvement with the task. The attributes listed by Beetlestone (1998a) encompassmany of the qualities of ‘good’ teaching, but still leave vague the definition of creativeteaching. By defining creativity and creative teaching in vague terms, educationistssidestep important aspects of both, and leave themselves open to vague statementswhich do not help us to understand the real nature of creative teaching.

Koestler’s theories of the act of creation seem to me to be the most completeaccount in the literature of how creativity works across all fields of human activity.His analysis of the creative act across the three domains of humour, discovery andart moves us much further forward in our understanding of creativity than do vaguenotions of innovation and being highly imaginative. The concepts employed byKoestler – of the matrices of thought or frames of reference; the bisociation betweentwo or more frames of reference, which provides the creative leap; the notion ofblockage while one operates, stuck, within one frame of reference; the notion ofexperiencing reality on several planes or frames of reference simultaneously; andabove all the central importance of analogy in making the creative leap – may serveto explain some of what happens at the moment of creation. The same notions canalso explain what occurs in creative planning and teaching, and in learning. They alsoserve to explain the importance of analogy or representation in teaching and learn-ing, and how, in true learning, there is an ‘act of re-creation’ as the learner strives tomake that creative leap first made by others long ago.

This kind of analysis may be applied to acts of creative teaching, such as those citedin the cameos which opened this chapter. In Cameo 1, the teacher decision is madeto tell a story of a medieval peasant and re-create a marketplace of that period. Thechildren become engaged with the historical situation as actors, and learn from thisenactive representation what it is like to trade and barter, and to have the taxmancome around to collect a tithe. Instead of ‘trade’, ‘barter’ and ‘tithe’ being mere wordson a page, they are lived experiences. Children learn concepts through such experi-ences, as well as stepping briefly out of their own shoes and understanding whatit was like to live in those times. In this sense Cameo 1 involves creative teaching inconnecting universal concerns (a son getting married, the need to build a house forhim and his wife, and the taxman’s demands), to a particular historical situation. Thedrama is both re-creation and recreation.

In Cameo 2, three disparate pieces of evidence, documents of different genres, arebrought together for the children to read and interpret: an extract from a book of mem-ories; an extract from a household manual; and a folk-song. Instead of the childrenreading a factual account of a day in the life of a housemaid, they are guided towardsreconstructing their own account. Domestic service was a major form of employmentin Victorian times, particularly for women, and the texts give clues as to the realityof that employment. The texts engage the emotions and, through the teachingapproaches used, the storytelling and freeze frame, and singing the song, the childrenbecome imaginatively engaged with what it was like to be a housemaid in Victoriantimes: to rise at 6 a.m. and work until 10 p.m. every day, to work on your half-day

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holiday, and to long for that half day. The creative teaching here lies in the assemblyof disparate sources, the teaching approaches, and the connection of the frames ofreference of the children’s own lives and the lives of people in Victorian times.

Cameo 3 shows complex learning over a period of time. The teacher takes thematerial on Drake, presented as a timeline or a simple chronology, and connects itto another frame of reference: the board game, one which is familiar to all the pupils.To make the activity a success she builds in a further frame of reference of the co-operative groups. This kind of learning involves knowledge transfer, as the childrentake the new knowledge presented to them (Drake’s voyage around the world as achronicle) and re-present it in another genre: the board game. Through working withthe information to put it into a new genre, they make it their own knowledge.

In these cameos the creativity lies both in the juxtaposition and connection ofdifferent frames of reference, from subjects, teaching approaches, the teacher’s selfand interests, and the interests and concerns of the children. Teachers who teach inthis way make ‘creative leaps’ to connect children with subject knowledge in thebroadest possible selection of ways, drawing on a wide pedagogical repertoire. I havedefined expert teaching as a creative act; however, this creative act is not always teach-ing in new ways, and what may be innovation for one teacher may be part of the dailyrepertoire of another. Rather, the concept of creative teaching presented in this bookis based on Koestler’s notion of creativity:

The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does notcreate something out of nothing: it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines and synthesisesalready existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills.

(Koestler, 1964, p. 120)

In this sense, one is being a creative teacher even when one reconstructs or re-createssuccessful teaching done by others. We have all watched, as learners or colleagues,wonderful teachers at work and wanted to emulate them. But through the act ofre-creation, we add ourselves and our own frames of reference to an activity. Creativeteaching is good for teachers and it is good for children. Through creative teaching,teachers open themselves up to all sorts of possibilities for communicating theirknowledge and experience. It is enjoyable and helps to renew the teacher both per-sonally and professionally, a renewal much needed in the current culture of perfor-mativity and accountability. Children too benefit from creative teaching, whichfosters their own creative abilities through the kinds of activities and approaches inthis book. Of central importance is the notion that planning for teaching in the wayspresented here is a genuinely creative act, in Koestler’s terms. Teachers who work inthis way draw together ideas, materials, activities, analogies, representations andthe whole of the pedagogical repertoire to generate activities which will enhancechildren’s learning, making it both memorable and enjoyable. Planning in this bookis not a matter of filling in boxes and ensuring ‘curriculum coverage’; it is instead anact of creation and celebrates what teaching is really about.

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Chapter 1 introduced a number of cameos of creative teaching in history and set out aconcept of creativity and creative teaching which informs the presentation of teachinghistory in this book. History however is not an isolated subject. There are connectionsto the whole of the primary curriculum. Cooper (1992, 2000) remarked that history is anumbrella discipline, embracing, through the study of past peoples and cultures, all theirart, science, design technology, religion, philosophy, music, dance, song, geography andvalues. Some understanding is needed of the nature of the primary curriculum, andof the discipline of history, to inform teaching approaches and the design of learningactivities. There follows a brief discussion of the primary teaching context and theprimary curriculum, touching briefly on the history and nature of primary teaching,and on curriculum integration and topic/thematic work. Next the focus is on history inthe primary curriculum, its nature and structures. Finally there is an introduction tothe pedagogical repertoire and how it may be used to teach high-quality, challenginghistory, which exercises proper historical skills and processes and promotes theengagement of the historical imagination. The rest of the book deals with how toachieve these aims.

The primary curriculum and subject integration

The current primary curriculum is probably one of the most prescriptive in the shorthistory of primary education in the United Kingdom, in some ways as prescriptiveas the ‘Payment by Results’ curriculum of 1862 to 1897. Between the beginnings ofprimary education there was the revised Code of 1904 which was far less prescriptive,and gave teachers much more autonomy both in content and pedagogy. This lasted until1926, when the removal of the elementary code resulted in the unregulated curriculum(Richards, 1999), also referred to by Richards as the ‘lottery curriculum’, of 1926 to 1988.Prior to the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1989 to 1991, primary school-teachers were allowed comparatively enormous freedom in their work. The impactof the Plowden Report (CACE, 1967) created a myth of ‘progressive education’ of whicha prominent feature was the topic or theme, a structural and organisation device for

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CHAPTER 2

History in the primarycurriculum

planning an integrated curriculum. The introduction of the subject-based NationalCurriculum in 1989 marked a major change from freedom to prescription in curricu-lum content, and from topics to subject-based teaching. The National Literacy Strategy

(NLS) (DfEE, 1998) and The National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) (DfEE, 1999b) furthercodified the content of maths and English and prescribed pedagogy. There are furtherchanges afoot however, and the new Primary National Strategy (DFES, 2003) suggests arelaxation of prescription, increased teacher autonomy on curriculum content and ped-agogy, and the restoration of a broad and balanced curriculum. One of its key points is:‘Empowering primary schools to take control of their curriculum, and to be more inno-vative and to develop their own character.’Thus the opportunities are there, potentiallyat least, for teachers to take control of the curriculum, and to be much more creativeand innovative in how they organise the curriculum and in how they teach it.

One feature which is apparent in the cameos presented in Chapter 1 is that ofcurriculum integration. Creative teaching is not synonymous with curriculum inte-gration, though it can involve it. A teacher can be creative in teaching only onesubject through her connection of different frames of reference through a wide rangeof teaching approaches which offer children multiple opportunities to connect withthe subject matter. It is important to be clear about both curriculum integration andthe nature of history.

Curriculum integration

Integrating the curriculum is a controversial issue, involving teachers’ deepest beliefsand understanding about subject knowledge, about how children learn, and about thenature of ‘real life’ outside schools. During the 1970s and 1980s the prevalent viewwas that young children should not be exposed to subjects. It was argued that theysaw the world in a seamless kind of way and imposing subjects on them was unnatu-ral. Research and writing from the late 1980s and early 1990s challenged this view(e.g. Mortimore et al., 1988; Alexander et al., 1992). They suggested that multi-focuscurricula tended to produce less effective teaching. Curriculum integration used to beapplied to thematic or topic work, and indeed, during the 1970s and 1980s there weremany tenuous links made between subjects in an attempt to tie everything into thetopic, often without due regard for the nature of each subject.

An important distinction needs to be made between integration that bringstogether quite different subjects, which none the less have some characteristics incommon with other subjects, and non-differentiation which is a way of thinking aboutsubjects that does not admit their separate identities (Alexander et al., 1992).In this book it is the first way of characterising curriculum integration which isemployed. To integrate and do full justice to each subject being taught, we need a veryclear understanding of the distinctive nature of each subject, and of what may beintegrated. In Turner-Bisset (2000a) there is an analysis of curriculum integrationwhich suggests for the future, integration by concept, by skill or process, or by content.

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mEach of these deserves some explanation, since those teaching activities presented inthis book which involve integration use these alternative forms of integration.

Integration by concept means taking the concept as the unifying factor in linkingsubject matter or teaching activities. All subjects have their concepts, and history isawash with them. There are overarching concepts such as time or chronology, causeand effect, change and continuity, evidence and enquiry. There are concepts such asdemocracy, monarchy, power, authority, which are abstract in nature. Finally there areconcepts specific to history such as the Black Death, the Reformation and the Blitz.Thus one might teach about scale as a sub-concept for understanding timelines,through maths and geography. There are some skills and processes which arecommon to a number of subjects. Sequencing is found in maths, English, history,PE, dance and music. Observation is found right across the curriculum, in art, history,design technology, science, music and geography. Comparing and contrasting arefound in several subject areas. Reasoning from evidence is intrinsic to maths, science,history and geography, as are enquiry and interpretation of evidence. Interpretationis used in English in the understanding of literature. Some analysis of the variousskills and processes across the curriculum can reveal ways of linking subjects throughthe key concepts, skills and processes. There is yet another way to integrate: by con-tent. This means using one subject as a vehicle to teach another. One example mightbe using music and dance as evidence of the past, and for imaginative reconstructionof the past through performance of music.

The nature of history

To teach history well in schools requires a deep understanding of history as a discipline.Without an informed understanding of the nature of history one can teach historyinappropriately, without due regard for the structures of the subject. Schwab (1964,1978) argued that an understanding of the disciplines was fundamental to teachingsubjects in school. He stated that disciplines had two kinds of structures: substantiveand syntactic. This distinction resembles Ryle’s (1949) propositional knowledge andprocedural knowledge, or ‘knowing that’ and ‘knowing how’. Substantive knowledgeis essentially the substance of the discipline, which has two aspects. The first of thesecomprises the facts and concepts of the discipline (for example, in history, that theBattle of Waterloo was fought in 1815). Concepts are more complex, since there aredifferent orders of concepts. The first order concepts are over-arching concepts whichdefine the ideas with which history is concerned. These are:

● Chronology (time)

● A sense of period (historical situations)

● Change

● Continuity

There are also second order concepts such as society, monarchy, democracy, class and theChurch which we use to understand historical situations. Finally history is packed withthird order concepts peculiar to history which we use as a kind of shorthand forperiods of time,events, systems,major changes or ways of thinking: the Middle Ages, thefeudal system, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, to give a few examples. The sec-ond aspect comprises the organising frameworks or paradigms which inform historicalenquiry. In history, competing frameworks have waxed and waned over the years,shaping the kinds of enquiry carried out. At one time history was thought of as theworking out of God’s purpose in the world, or as a kind of moral illustration, as a scienceor as an art (Evans, 1997). Later it was conceptualised both as an art and as a science.

Just as important and perhaps more significant for intending teachers of historyare the syntactic structures of a discipline. An understanding of these structurescan fundamentally shape one’s notions of the nature of history and what it meansto teach history in the primary classroom. Syntactic structures are the processesby which new truths become established in a discipline. In history these are theprocesses of enquiry: the search for evidence; the examination of evidence; therecording of evidence; the interpretation and weighing of different sources and kindsof evidence; and the synthesis of historical narrative or argument. In these processesthere is always the exercise of the historical imagination, since evidence from thepast is nearly always incomplete, in some cases fragmentary. We speculate andhypothesise about the past. We imagine how it might have been and we fill in thegaps left by the evidence. Thus history is a combination of three aspects: the scientificaspect in enquiry and interpretation of evidence; the imaginative or speculativeaspect in the exercise of the historical imagination; and the literary aspect in thepresentation of history or histories to others (Trevelyan, 1913).

To achieve excellence in the teaching of history one needs a full understandingof these structures. This may seem to be a bold claim, or too far removed from theconcerns of primary teachers. However, one only has to consider what happens, orwhat might happen, when history (or any other subject) is taught without due regardfor its substantive and syntactic structures. If history is presented to children asdefinite facts about the past, recorded in books as secondary evidence, then childrenmiss out on part of the essential nature of history. They have no understanding thathistory is about enquiry and interpretation of evidence. History at worst can becomethe meaningless copying out of information from topic books, and the productionof pleasing work and artefacts for display. Of course children will learn something

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● Cause

● Effect (consequence)

● Historical evidence

● Interpretations of evidence or points of view

about the past but they will be deprived of a full understanding of history. They willalso be deprived of the skills of enquiry, of interpretation, of detection of bias andof the synthesis of argument. All these skills are arguably of major importance foradult life.

There is a tendency in schools (and sometimes in universities) to treat the fruits ofdisciplines as if they are uncontested facts or literal truths instead of interpretationsof evidence. Schwab (1978) argued that we have tended to simplify the findings ofscientific, mathematical or historical enquiry to the point where such knowledge canbe correctly understood without reference to the structures which had produced it.This was done in the interests of effective teaching, because we tended to think thatwhat was taught would not be affected by presenting knowledge in this way. Theseideas are difficult, but an example of Schwab’s point is the cramming of scientificfacts for SATs. Schwab further argued that to teach without due attention to bothsubstantive and syntactic structures was, in terms of teaching and outcomes, ‘acorruption of the discipline’ (Schwab, 1978, p. 243).

Over long years of observing history lessons taught in primary schools, I havewitnessed many occasions of corruption of the discipline. One common example is forchildren to do comprehension work on historical texts, or cloze tasks on paragraphsprepared by the teacher. Another common example is for teachers to gather childrenon the carpet, tell them factual information, and ask them to draw pictures and writeabout what they have heard. Video is often used as text, with the children answeringquestions on the video. This variant I call ‘video comprehension’. There is often anemphasis on the production of work for display or for topic folders, which seems to bean example of the ‘production line’ classroom described by Cockburn (1995) in whichthere is an atmosphere of business and productivity. There is also the ubiquitous‘research’or ‘finding out’ from children’s topic books, encyclopedias, CD-ROMs and theinternet, which is not genuine historical enquiry, being rarely fuelled by questions.More often it is guided by a general instruction to ‘find out about’, and can lead tocopying of information, or the modern equivalent of copying, cutting and pastingto produce historical writing which contains nothing of the child’s understanding. Allthese are examples of the corruption of history as a discipline.

A third strand to subject knowledge is our set of beliefs and attitudes towards thesubject. What we believe history to be has considerable impact on how we teach it: thisis why a proper understanding of substantive and syntactic structures is so important.There are still widely held views that, for example, history is about learning facts anddates and about kings and queens. One’s beliefs about a subject can influence one’sattitudes towards it, being shaped by perception and experience. Many beginningteachers come to primary history with negative attitudes, based on their own experi-ence of it as a school subject. Negative attitudes are hard to alter in any subject;however, it is of vital importance to change them. To teach history well one needsenthusiasm born out of understanding. It is not easy to communicate enthusiasm fora subject which one does not understand or even like. Enthusiasm is a vital element in

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Figure 2.1 Map of history (reproduced with permission from Teaching History (Historical

Association, 2001))

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mteaching: crucially, beginning teachers need to understand the nature of history, and toenjoy and value it. Figure 2.1 presents a ‘Map of History’ which may be used as a guideto understanding its nature and an aid in planning.

This ‘Map of History’ should be used in conjunction with the History NationalCurriculum document. The present History National Curriculum (DFEE, 1999c) is arevision of two earlier versions (DES, 1991 and 1995). It is important to understand thatthis is a ‘framework’ curriculum comprising two parts. The first part, numbered 1–5 inthe document, comprises the knowledge, skills and understanding which are to be de-veloped through the history curriculum. The second part is the breadth of study, whichcomprises the content to be taught. The really important point is that only informationprinted in purple or black ink has statutory force. There is no legal requirement to teachall the suggested content, which is in grey ink. Teachers may select from these sugges-tions, or substitute their own areas of content within the framework of the breadth ofstudy units offered. Readers should compare the ‘Map of History’ with the curriculumdocument, and pick out key concepts, skills and processes.

Definitions of history for primary teaching

Four key definitions are used in this book, along with key ideas from the NuffieldPrimary History Project (Dean, 1995; Fines and Nichol, 1997; Nichol and Dean, 1997).These definitions are those of Trevelyan (1913), Collingwood (1946), Turner-Bisset(2000b), and Hexter (1972). It is practicality rather than delusions of grandeur whichencourages me to place my rather basic definition next to that of three eminenthistorians. Trevelyan’s concept of history as the combination of science (enquiry),imagination and literary activity has already been mentioned. Collingwood suggestedthat historical evidence had something in common with the evidence used in a mur-der enquiry: historians are like detectives, working out what might have happenedfrom a range of clues and sources. In trying to define history simply as a summary ofthe activity students had been engaged in, playing at detective with a suitcase fromlost property, I devised the following definition:

History is the imaginative reconstruction of the past using what evidence we can find. Wecan state what we definitely know from the evidence. We can hypothesise about things weare unsure of, and we can use other knowledge and experience to inform our interpretations.

(Turner-Bisset, 2000b, p. 171)

This definition leads us to Hexter’s work which is extremely valuable for understandinghistory teaching in the primary classroom. He showed that history is a process. Fromhim one can take the idea of ‘doing history’ (Fines and Nichol, 1997). Rather thanchildren studying history as do professional historians, it can mean that we try toengage children in tasks which see them acting as historians. They follow the syntacticstructures of what historians do, and understand how history differs from othersubjects. Fines and Nichol (1997) gave a very clear outline of the study of history in theprimary classroom:

These are the processes of historical enquiry: of ‘doing history’. Interpretation iscentral to this process, as evidence may be viewed from a multitude of perspectives.Historical evidence takes many forms: archaeological remains, artefacts, pictures,photographs, paintings, engravings, cartoons, clothing, buildings, sites, the landscapeand the environment, music, song and dance, literature of a period, historical fictionand film, and documentary evidence of all kinds: newspapers, magazines and books,diaries, memoirs, journals, eyewitness accounts, census returns, trade directories,letters, inventories and advertisements, to give only a few examples. It is the task ofhistorians, and of children acting as historians, to collect (with the aid of the teacher),analyse, organise and interpret the evidence, weighing its validity and reliabilityagainst other evidence of the same event, person or period.

According to Hexter (1972), the available sources are history’s ‘first record’: the rawmaterial of primary sources and the secondary sources of later interpretations. Inexamining and interpreting these sources, we bring to bear upon the ‘first record’ whatHexter called the ‘second record’. This is all our rich experience and knowledge of lifeto date. This ‘second record’ is usually private and personal, as well as individual. Forexample, a teacher who had grown up in the Middle East would have a very differentsecond record with which to interpret news of the war in Iraq than someone born andraised in England. Children do not have such richly developed second records as adultsdo, though they may have experienced hunger and hardship, racism and violence. Oneof the roles of the teacher is to extend the children’s second records by sharing her or hisown second record with them; and through providing opportunities for them to pooltheir knowledge through pair, group and whole class discussion. Hexter’s ideas of thefirst and second record are most useful for teachers: for understanding the processesof historical enquiry; and informing their planning for teaching history. The notion ofinterpretation needs to include the exercise of the historical imagination, since this isvital both as a part of the historical process and as a process of learning in the primaryclassroom. Hexter’s ideas can also partially illuminate our understanding of howchildren learn in history.

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● First, we must be examining a topic from the past and raising questions about it.

● Second, we must search for a wide range of evidence to help us answer ourquestion.

● Third, we must struggle to understand what the sources are saying (and eachsource-type has a different language) so that we can understand them in ourown terms.

● Fourth, we must reason out and argue our answer to the questions, andsupport them with well-chosen evidence.

● Finally, we must communicate our answers for the process to be complete.

(Fines and Nichol, 1997, p. 1)

Children’s learning and history

Teaching a subject involves understanding its substantive and syntactic structures,and what makes it distinctive from other subjects. In addition, knowledge and under-standing of the psychology of children’s learning are essential for excellent teaching ofhistory. There is not space in this chapter for a full exposition of theories of children’slearning, but a brief outline is given below of those most relevant to learning history.These theories are: schema theory; theories of conceptual change; Bruner’s (1970)ideas of different modes of mental representation; and Vygotsky’s theories of sociallearning.

The key notion in schema theory, which originated in the Genevan School withPiaget (1959) and his colleagues, is that thought processes depend upon our abilityto create mental representations of objects and people. The experience of these,including the way they relate to each other, is stored as schema: internal representa-tions which can be quite complex patterns. Adaptation is the process by whichschemas are changed, and it has two aspects: assimilation and accommodation.Each time a person has a new experience, he or she makes some sort of image orinternal representation of it. This alone is not enough for learning. To become partof a schema, accommodation is required. It is not simply a process of adding newknowledge. The new ideas, knowledge, mental images or experience need to beworked on in some way so that the schema is altered to accommodate the new mater-ial, concept or understanding. A state of disequilibrium is experienced during theprocess of accommodation, which may be accompanied by emotion. Such emotionmay be pleasurable (e.g. laughter or surprise). Interestingly, these emotions accom-pany humour in Koestler’s exposition of creativity. The intersection of two differentmatrices or frames of reference can provoke laughter, insight or wonder dependingon the position in the triptych (see Figure 1.3, p. 10). Learning is thus linked tocreativity. Sometimes less comfortable emotions accompany accommodation, suchas fear, anger, or of not being able to cope. There are various ways of coping withcognitive and emotional dissonance or conflict. One possibility is to ignore newinformation or experience which does not accord with our existing schema. Anotheris to live with the conflict or disequilibrium, but this can be rather uncomfortable.Alternatively, people can restructure their schemas to accommodate new informa-tion, knowledge and experience. The learner has to take an active part in this processof accommodation or restructuring. In history, through the activities designed andled by the teacher, the children’s existing second record, which forms part of theirschema, is altered through the process of studying history.

The second set of theories about learning is that of learning as concept acquisitionand conceptual change. When young children first encounter creepy-crawlies, theymight call them all spiders: only later might they learn to distinguish spiders frombeetles and flies. The understanding of ‘dog’ comes through repeated experiencesof a wide range of creatures, from miniature poodles to Labradors, to eventually

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produce a concept which embraces all these different varieties of the same kind ofanimal. Abstract concepts, for example those concerned with emotions such ashappiness, or systems of government such as democracy, likewise are acquired overa period of time. When Laurie Lee was asked to ‘Sit there for the present’ by his infantteacher, he learned by the end of the day (with some uncomfortable emotions) that‘present’ meant something to do with time as well as something to do with gifts.History is packed with concepts, many of which are abstract. They must be taughtactively to ensure that children’s understanding of concepts matches that of adults.The concept of the ‘Church’ as a powerful organisation (and not just the buildingthe children pass every day on their way to school) would need to be actively taught.Stones (1992) argued that much learning was conceptual and that teachers had toplan for the teaching of concepts and sub-concepts. Thus in carrying outhistorical enquiry on the Palace of Knossos, for example, the teacher would have toactively teach the concept of ‘palace’. This may be done by showing OHT imagesof palaces, colour-photocopied from coffee table books, asking the children to pointout their characteristics, and then getting them to design their own plan of theirpalace.

The third set of theories come from Bruner (1970), and I have found his ideasextremely powerful in understanding learning and teaching, and finding a languagewith which to discuss both. Bruner states that there are three characteristic ways ofmentally representing the world. Enactive representation is understanding by doing.Iconic representation is understanding through pictures, diagrams, drawings, maps andplans. Symbolic representation is understanding through some kind of symbol system.Examples of symbolic systems are language, both spoken and written, mathematicalnotation and musical notation. Young children tend to use enactive representationsfirst, then iconic ones, finally moving to symbolic representations. A child might learnto use a slide by watching other children in the playground. Later in reception classshe might draw herself playing on the slide. Later still she will write about her weekendvisit to the playground as part of her class journal. The spoken symbol system oflanguage accompanies all these experiences. As adults we move back and forth betweenthese forms of representation. The younger one’s children, the more useful enactiverepresentations are for learning, although children across the whole primary age rangewill gain a great deal from teachers using them. One can, for example, learn about theintricacies of Tudor dance through doing it, by looking at pictures of it, or by readingabout it. Of these options, performing the dance will be the most powerful form oflearning: through dancing and hearing some of the Tudor music one will begin tounderstand their pastimes, their highly sophisticated nature and something about theTudor people.

The final set of theories come from Vygotsky (1962, 1978), who generated ideasof social learning. Two ideas are drawn upon here. The first is the notion of thezone of proximal development: the potential for learning, understanding, knowingand doing which is not yet reached, but which can be realised through interaction

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with more knowledgeable, experienced others. Social interaction is the second ideaof great importance for learning. A child may not be able to achieve somethingon his own, but, through social interaction with others, he may do so. Such socialinteraction can take the form of teachers’ whole class questioning and dialogue, orthrough peer interaction with others in pairs and small groups. In this way, childrencan pool their ideas, test them against each other in open debate, and deepen theirunderstanding. If one relates theories of learning to the ideas of Hexter (1972),they provide a powerful justification for the kind of whole class, pair and groupteaching which characterises best practice in history teaching. It is possible totrace examples of these theories at work in the cameos presented at the start ofChapter 1.

Knowledge and understanding of a number of theories about learning can informour teaching approaches. Schema theory would indicate that we need to provide a rangeof activities which allow children to work on historical material in very active ways, notmerely reading words on a page, but engaging physically, mentally and emotionallywith facts, concepts, skills and processes to make the new material part of their mentalmap of the world. Conceptual change theory emphasises the acquisition and modifica-tion of concepts. If one harnesses this theory to Bruner’s ideas of enactive, iconic andsymbolic representation, we can see the need for a wide range of teaching approaches,using all three forms of representation. Vygotsky’s ideas of social learning and the zoneof proximal development can help us to understand the importance of language, inparticular of speaking and listening, in learning: for sharing, exploring, challenging andshaping ideas and understanding through discussion. If one understands teaching andlearning history to be partly a matter of altering, enriching and enhancing children’ssecond records through ‘doing history’ in Hexter’s terms, one has moved a long wayfrom merely giving or exposing children to historical information and expecting themto remember it.

Important principles in the teaching of history

These principles were devised and used by the Nuffield Primary History ProjectTeam, who, in a major research and curriculum development project, spent five yearsteaching the new History in the National Curriculum (DES, 1991) to children ina huge variety of primary schools. The principles are underpinned by the ideas ofhistory set out in the previous section. History teaching based on these principles isexcellent practice. The central tenet is that history in schools should be taught interms of investigation and discussion. Children should investigate primary sources,question them rigorously, set them into context using their imagination and experi-ence of life, and each produce their own history in some form, spoken or written:a play, a poem, a drawing, a piece of writing, a display, an assembly, a dance orexpressive movement, or a song. The seven principles of the Nuffield Primary HistoryProject are:

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Challenge

A key factor in studies of effective teaching is having high expectations of children (seee.g. Mortimore et al., 1988; Hay McBer, 2000). This is as true in history as in othersubjects. If you give children challenging (but accessible) materials, they respond well.Children can often surprise and delight us with their response to ‘difficult’ work orideas, as long as we make the materials and ideas accessible to them (see principle 6).

Questioning

Questioning is so vital a part of the historical process that it is difficult to envisagestudying history without it. Questioning is the force that drives historical enquiry.A unit of work should ideally start with a key question from which may spring otherquestions. From open, speculative questions which may spring either from thechildren or the teacher, the children can generate further questions which refine thefocus of the enquiry or open up further themes. Although questions should drivetopics of study, one might not always start with a question. In selecting from thepedagogical repertoire (see p. 28), a teacher might choose to start with a story, arole-play, a film-clip or an OHT of a picture, and then move on to questions arisingfrom the sources or imaginative reconstructions.

Study in depth

Dean (1995) and Fines and Nichol (1997) argued powerfully that real historical knowl-edge means knowledge in depth. It is quite usual to see medium-term plans in whichchildren spend their weekly hour or so on several different aspects of a period. For theVictorians they would attempt to ‘cover’ transport, inventions, houses and homes,the Great Exhibition, work, leisure, key events, famous people and education. Theteacher might feel that she has ‘covered’ the curriculum, and the children haveacquired much knowledge of the period. However, such knowledge is easily forgottenif not made part of mental maps, schema or second records. Rushing childrenthrough masses of content means they do not have any time to learn anything. Along

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1 Challenging the children

2 Asking questions

3 The study of a topic in depth

4 The use of authentic sources

5 Economy in the use of such sources

6 Making the sources accessible to children

7 Pupil communication of their understanding to an audience

(Fines and Nichol, 1997)

with this kind of history teaching is the tendency to ignore the skills and processes ofhistorical enquiry in the headlong rush to ‘cover’ content. Study in depth means thatunderstanding of historical concepts, themes, skills and processes may be acquiredthrough carefully structured activities on a key problem or question. The in-depthstudy anchors historical knowledge and understanding in a meaningful context.Cameo 2 on housemaids in Victorian times is a good example of this.

Authentic sources

Using primary sources is essential in excellent history teaching. Children need toinvestigate and interpret sources for themselves and construct their own histories. Ifthe sources used are not authentic, then their histories are fiction. They must be basedon evidence. The problem with using mainly secondary sources, such as the topicbooks seen in every primary classroom, is that although some of the illustrationsmight be primary evidence, the text is not. It is someone else’s interpretation of othersources. Historians question the validity, reliability and integrity of sources. Thisprocess needs to be modelled in the classroom so that children can eventually do itthemselves.

Economy of sources

There is not often much money to spend on history in the primary school budget. Ofcourse, in principle one would love to have plentiful resources for history, but one canmanage very well with a few well-chosen resources. Much valuable historical enquirymay be done by focusing on one story, one picture or one set of plans. For example,the Victorian housemaids investigation used just three sources. Part of the teacher’sexpertise lies in selecting sources which children can investigate: in Bruner’s terms,scaffolding the enquiry by taking on that important preparatory stage of searchingfor sources.

Accessibility

Not all forms of historical evidence are easily accessible to children. Pictures andphotographs, maps and plans, building sites and music are often easier to understandand interpret than written sources. The teacher, through the teaching approaches sheselects, must act as an intermediary between all sources and the children to makethem accessible. The teacher plays a key role in a number of different ways. The firstis working with the whole class in making sources accessible through verbal, visualand interactive methods. The second is in devising activities which will help childrento ‘find ways into the evidence’. An example of this might be asking children to lookfor where, in a picture of a Saxon village, they might hide if raiders were coming. Thisensures that children look closely at the picture and properly engage with it. They willthen notice details which a more cursory glance would have missed. It can mean the

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teacher posing a key question of a source, or using a game such as ‘I-Spy’ to getthe children to look closely at the picture. For an investigation of street people inVictorian London, using selected evidence from Mayhew as source material, it canmean the teacher starting the lesson in role as a busker, a juggler, a costermongeror street sweeper. For an investigation of census material, the teacher would teachthe concept of a census by taking a class census using the same headings as thosegiven in the real documents (Fines and Nichol, 1997). Making documents accessibledeserves some attention and is considered in more detail in Chapter 4.

Pupil communication of their understanding to an audience

The culmination of the process of historical enquiry is the presentation of a recon-structed history to an audience: the final stage in Hexter’s model of ‘doing history’.Presentation can take many forms: written, oral, pictorial, kinaesthetic, musical anddramatic. A historical story might be presented as a series of freeze frames, or asexpressive movement. A class museum made by the children can be the culminationof work on artefacts, showing, through their written or computer-generated labels,their understanding of the objects, the people who used them and the period in whichthey lived. Written forms can embrace all the varied genres of writing, including, forexample, poems, letters, stories, accounts, persuasive pamphlets, advertisements andexplanations. These may be designed for a variety of audiences: another class, peoplefrom the past, the prime minister, readers of the tabloids and so on.

The pedagogical repertoire

In order to teach anything to anyone, one needs a broad pedagogical repertoire. Thedemands of history as a subject and of children’s learning require that one has the widestpossible range of strategies for connecting children with subject matter. Figure 2.2presents a model of a pedagogical repertoire which serves two functions in this book.The first is of a general model of expert teaching (Turner-Bisset, 2001), which can informone’s classroom practice across the curriculum. The second is as a spine for the restof this book, a way of structuring materials under different teaching approaches andkinds of evidence. The pedagogical repertoire consists of three aspects supporting whatis to be learned: facts, concepts, skills, processes, beliefs and attitudes. The first aspectis the general one of approaches, activities, examples, analogies and illustrations forrepresenting what is to be learned. Aspect 2 is the wide range of teaching approaches:storytelling, Socratic dialogue, drama, role-play, simulation, demonstration, modelling,problem-solving, singing, playing games, knowledge transformation, question-andanswer, instructing, explaining and giving feedback. Most of the range of teachingapproaches in aspect 2 form the structure of this book.

Aspect 3 comprises those generic strategies and skills which might be termed ‘actingskills’. Tauber and Mester (1995) likened teaching to acting: the two professions being

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Figure 2.2 A pedagogical repertoire

strongly related in that they are both performance arts. Both teachers and actors need tohold the attention of the audience and convey conviction in what they are saying.Tauber and Mester (1995) introduced the idea of the teachers’ ‘toolbox’, effectively ananalysis of teacher enthusiasm. This comprised the top tray tools of voice or vocal ani-mation, body language or physical animation, and effective use of classroom space. Thebottom tray tools are humour, role-playing, use of props, and the elements of surpriseand suspense. In the teaching approach of storytelling used in both Cameo 1 and 2(Chapter 1), one employs the ‘top tray tools’ of vocal animation, physical animation ingesture and use of classroom space in moving about the room while storytelling. Storiesalso hold suspense: the audience can be spellbound, wanting to know what happenednext. The toolbox as analysis of teacher enthusiasm is important for demystifying it,and showing its ingredients. The use of the toolbox of verbal and non-verbal channelsof communication is clearly of great importance, as are teachers’ engagement with thematerial to be taught, their deep understanding of it and their passion for the subject.

The use of suspense, surprise and humour in teaching has received less attentionperhaps than it deserves. These days much is made of the advantages for learning ofletting the children know what one’s learning objectives are. While there is value indoing so, if every lesson starts with the class reading out the learning objectives on theboard, this can lead to routine predictability. Lessons should start in different ways,in keeping with the notion of a pedagogical repertoire, providing opportunitiesfor suspense and surprise. Humour in teaching is likewise very important, for severalreasons. The role it plays in creativity should alert us to its twin functions of connect-ing different frames of reference and defusing tension in the release of laughter. It isin effect an opening of the mind to new possibilities, new concepts and new ways ofperceiving the world. Laughter also relaxes audiences of all kinds, as public speakersand teachers both know: the seasoning of difficult material with a joke is part of thestock-in-trade of the teacher. This defusion of tension is important for learning, foropening up our minds and emotions and making us receptive. Finally, humour isimportant as part of the general pedagogical repertoire for managing the class, itsdynamics and its complex relationships. It serves to create an ethos in which teachingand learning are enjoyable for both children and teachers alike.

The structure of this book follows for the most part aspect 2 of the pedagogicalrepertoire, aiming to give teachers a wide range of approaches and activities in thecreative teaching of history with children. As well as teaching approaches, there arelesson plans, examples of children’s work and insights into the pedagogical reasoningand creative processes underpinning the examples of teaching.

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Introduction:The importance of objects

Objects are of central importance in teaching and may be used in myriad ways for avariety of teaching purposes across the primary curriculum. In history they are usefulfor teaching some of the skills and processes of historical enquiry, especially for chil-dren who may have had little or no experience of these. Most of the recent texts onteaching history in primary schools have a section on using artefacts (e.g. Pluckrose,1991; Wright, 1992; Cooper, 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 2000; Kimber et al., 1995; Wood andHolden, 1995; Fines and Nichol, 1997; Nichol and Dean, 1997; Hughes et al., 2000;O’Hara and O’Hara, 2001; Wallace, 2003). Because of their appeal to all the senses,they are particularly suitable for children in the early years. If you have very littleexperience in teaching history, artefacts can be a good way into doing some genuinehistorical enquiry and experiencing some successful lessons. However, there arecertain issues related to teaching aspects of history using artefacts, and it is importantto be aware of these issues. This chapter gives: an overview of some of the issues in-volved; an insight into some of the thinking behind the activities; a range of activitieswhich can form the basis of a teaching repertoire using artefacts; and sample lessonplans and activities.

Advantages and issues in using objects

There are many good reasons for using objects in teaching across the curriculumand in history in particular. It can generate a greater appreciation of the role ofobjects themselves in our lives. Objects help us in obtaining, preparing and cookingfood, in providing water, heating and shelter. They are a central part of many humanactivities such as family life, work, religion, communication, leisure, sports, music,the arts and entertainment. If children can learn to interpret objects from theirown society, they can make links between themselves and people in the past, whohad the same human needs and problems. Objects can also help us to understandthe lives of people from cultures which have left little or no written remains

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CHAPTER 3

Artefacts

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m (e.g. poor people, the very young, people from cultures such as the Benin,whose historical remains are mainly artefacts and oral history). Using objects forteaching can develop knowledge, skills, concepts and attitudes among children.Durbin et al., in their excellent booklet A Teacher’s Guide to Learning from Objects

(1990, pp. 5–6), list an impressive array of possible learning outcomes. These areas follows.

Developing skills

● Locating, recognising, identifying, planning;

● Handling, preserving, storing;

● Observing and examining;

● Discussing, suggesting, estimating, hypothesising, synthesising, predicting,generalising, assessing influence;

● Experimenting, deducing, comparing, concluding, evaluating;

● Relating structure to function, classifying, cataloguing;

● Recording through writing, drawing, labelling, photographing, taping, filming,computing;

● Responding, reporting, explaining, displaying, presenting, summarising,criticising.

● Different materials and what they were or are used for;

● Techniques and vocabulary of construction and decoration;

● The social, historic and economic context within which the items featured;

● The physical effects of time;

● The meaning of symbolic forms;

● The way people viewed their world;

● The existence and nature of particular museums, sites, galleries and collections;

● Symbol, pattern, colour;

● ‘Appropriateness’, for example, the use of rucksacks compared to handbags;

● Appreciation of cultural values.

Extending knowledge

Developing concepts

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● Chronology, change, continuity and progress;

● Design as a function of use, availability of materials and appearance;

● Aesthetic quality;

● Typicality, bias, survival;

● Fashion, style and taste;

● Original, fake, copy;

● Heritage, collection, preservation, conservation.

Many of these learning outcomes are cross-curricular in nature; however, thereare clearly many which apply to history in particular. In addition, there are severalreasons why objects will work more powerfully for children than will pictures ofobjects. Some things are lost: detail, exact colouring, size, weight, mass, and the phys-ical sensations such as smell. Tactile evidence is also lost, such as texture, tempera-ture, shape and details of manufacture, and the three-dimensional design of theobject. One also loses the feeling of age associated with the object, the concepts oforiginal and reproduction, and most importantly, the feelings of awe and wonderwhich can be generated through use of an object.

Issues in using objects

There are some issues involved in using objects, and beginning teachers need to beaware of these. It is very easy for children to dismiss objects after a cursory glance andto assume they know all there is to know about them. Discussion can close down if toomuch emphasis is placed on questions such as: ‘What is this object? How old is it?’ Ionce worked with a reception class teacher on a Master’s-level course, who was keento do some action research on using objects with her 5-year-olds. Ultimately the workand the learning were disappointing. Despite never having been encouraged to focuson the age of objects in the taught course, her lessons with children tended to become‘stuck’ on the ages of the objects she used. The 5-year-olds had only a developingunderstanding of time, and suggested that objects were ‘millions of years old’. Thereis so much more that one can do with objects than concentrate on their age, and thischapter offers a whole range of suggestions and teaching ideas to use instead. Armedwith a beginning repertoire of teaching approaches for objects, there is less likelihoodof floundering in questions of age and time, or inappropriate activities.

Presentation of objects is very important in encouraging children to not be dismis-sive and to look more closely. Dean in Fines and Nichol (1997) suggests a range ofideas, including posting an object to a school wrapped in layers and layers of packag-ing to make it harder to get at the object, and thus rendering it more special. She also

suggests putting objects in an old box or suitcase with a lock that does not work verywell, so that it can take a while and a struggle to open the box. One can also keep smallobjects hidden in one’s hand or pocket for enough time to build up excitement. Onecan tell a story about the object before introducing it, or during or after.

Other issues need consideration before working with objects and artefacts. It isimportant to work from familiar objects and experience before using old objects. InTurner-Bisset (2000b) I describe a session using artefacts with 3- and 4-year-olds. Oneof the objects was a bright yellow candle holder made of enamel, with a curved baseto catch the wax and a handle to carry it around the house. One of the children wasconvinced it was a wine holder of the type he had seen adults drink from on holidays.No amount of discussion could dissuade him from this. It would have been better touse a table lamp or a torch first and then to bring out the old object. I saw this donevery well by Andrew, a student-teacher in a mixed age infant class of Reception,Year 1 and Year 2 in a tiny village school. He had a modern table lamp, a candle holdersimilar to mine from the 1950s and an old oil lamp. With the children sitting onthe carpet he used a framework of questions to promote discussion, comparison andcontrast. Volunteer children sequenced the three artefacts; he then divided thechildren into three groups and asked them to draw one of the artefacts from the angleat which they observed it on one of three tables. As part of the term’s work on light, ascience-led topic, it worked well from both a scientific and historical point of view, aswell as developing language.

One of the reasons for the success of this session was the careful use of a frameworkof questions. This is important if one is to prevent the activity from becoming just aguessing game, as Andretti (1993) warned:

Too often such work can turn into a random guessing game. Of course some guessworkwill be necessary but it should take the form of reasoned hypotheses which develop afteras many facts as possible have been established.

(Andretti, 1993, p. 11)

In other words, questions should be open and promote thinking and discussion, ratherthan closed (What is it? How old is it?). I use the framework given in Figure 3.1 withchildren aged 3 to 7 and use a more extensive range of questions with older children.

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What does this look like?

What does this feel like?

What do you think this is made of?

Have you ever seen anything like this?

How is/was it used?

Who uses it/used to use it?

What would it be like to use it?

Figure 3.1 A framework of questions

Another issue is the way that young children in particular will flit between factand fantasy (Wood and Holden, 1995, p. 21). Depending on one’s viewpoint and thepurposes of one’s teaching, this can be either a difficulty or a blessing. My personalinclination would be to allow children at Key Stage 1 in particular to develop theirfantasies and stories, and to use the objects as a stimulus for creative writing. Afterthis, one could return to a drawing and labelling activity to develop other skills,knowledge and understanding. We need to engage our imaginations to make sense ofsome objects in any case, and I use a lot of mime, modelled initially by myself, to showhow objects might have been used. The younger the children are, the more importantis play with the artefacts. They need to experience through play all the possibilitiesof an artefact, its fantasy and real uses as a sensory way of understanding it. Olderchildren still need some experience of mime and acting out using the objects in orderto begin to understand the lives of those who used them.

Where to get objects/artefacts for use in the classroom

A common concern among beginning teachers is the problem of finding and acquiringobjects for classroom use. There are a number of possibilities:

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● Ask parents/older relatives to look in their cupboards and lend you objects.

● Car boot sales and charity shops are a good source of cheap objects. I find themuseful for objects from the past fifty or sixty years, such as kitchen equipmentwhich is no longer in common use.

● Some local museum services do loan collections (e.g. the Museum of Londonhas Roman boxes for schools within the Greater London area).

● Some museums will arrange object-handling sessions run by members of theirstaff. These can be excellent.

Artefact activities

Once you have your objects, you will need a range of activities for teaching well, usingthem in different ways. As you begin to try out a few of these lesson ideas, you willadapt and change them according to your own ideas and the classes you teach.

Bag activity

This is a very good activity for introducing the skills and processes of historicalenquiry to children who may have had little or no experience of them. Simply, onetakes a bag or suitcase and fills it with things belonging to a real or imaginary person.The task of the children is to examine and interpret the objects (and the bag itself).Ideally one does this with a bag or suitcase prepared beforehand, but even one’shandbag will do. I once forgot to put my carefully packed bag in the car before going

to work in school. I improvised with my handbag, obviously removing any items of apersonal nature first.

Grid activity (research)

Draw up a grid similar to the one given in Figure 3.2. Divide the class into smallgroups. Give each group one or two objects and ask them to fill in the grid for eachobject. The first column can be filled in if the children know what the object is; otherthan that they can leave it blank to begin with. The final column can contain sourcessuch as reference books, topic books, the internet, people, and what they havemanaged to find out. If they finish their objects, they can swap with anothergroup. The aim behind this activity is to get the children to reason using the availableevidence. I always try to emphasise the lives of people behind the objects. Forexample, with a heavy Victorian iron, I ask children to pretend to use it (unheatedof course) so they gain some idea as to how hard ironing must have been inthose days.

Consequences game

This is very useful if you only have, say, eight objects on loan from the museum anda class of, say, 32 children. Divide the class into eight groups of four. Give each group

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Name of object if What I definitely What I think I What I need to find

known know about this know/can out/where I might

object hypothesise about look for information

this object

Object 1

Object 2

Object 3

Figure 3.2 Grid enquiry activity

an object and tell them to write (one child acting as scribe) on one piece of paper threeor four questions about the object. I find it is useful to ban the question: ‘How old isit? (see Figure 3.3 for an example framework of questions). When each group hastheir list of three or four questions, tell the children that at a given signal, they willpass on their object and the questions to the next group. Then each group has to try

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You can draw upon these groups of questions in devising lists of questions for children to ask

about objects. Older children (e.g. Year 5/Year 6) could probably tackle the whole list. For

younger children it is best to select from the list and focus on three or four for Foundation Stage,

five or six for Key Stage 1.

Looking at objects (2)

The main things to think about Some further questions to ask

PHYSICAL FEATURES What colour is it?

What does it look and feel like? What does it smell like?

What does it sound like?

What is it made of?

Is it a natural or manufactured material?

Is the object complete?

Has it been altered, adapted, mended?

Is it worn?

CONSTRUCTION Is it handmade or machine made?

How was it made? Was it made in a mould or in pieces?

How has it been fixed together?

FUNCTION How has the object been used?

Has the use changed?

DESIGN Does it do the job it was intended to do well?

Is it well designed? Were the best materials used?

Is it decorated?

How is it decorated?

Do you like the way it looks?

Would other people like it?

VALUE To the people who made it?

What is it worth? To the people who used it?

To the people who keep it?

To you?

To a bank?

To a museum?

Figure 3.3 Learning from objects

to answer the previous group’s questions. For the plenary, ask one child fromeach group to hold up the object, another child to read out the questions, and a thirdand fourth child to take turns reading their answers. The whole class can then discussthe objects.

Drawing and labelling

This activity is invaluable for slowing down the pace of looking, so that children havethe opportunity to really see what is there. There are several good reasons for doingthis activity.

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1 Drawing slows down the pace of looking. In order to draw, children have toobserve detail; for example, how parts of an object are joined together, anydecoration, details of manufacture. Drawing is wonderful for developingconcentration and observation skills.

2 This activity is accessible for all children in a class so that those with literacydifficulties are not disadvantaged.

3 The drawing and labelling are examples of children’s work, recording theirunderstanding of an object.

4 The record of children’s understanding in this form can provide material forassessment.

5 Labelling can allow children to add to their understanding of an object. Moreable children can be encouraged to annotate parts of an object.

Comparing old and new

If you have two objects, say an old Victorian iron and a new electric iron, you can com-pare them. Looking for similarities and differences is a way of working with the his-torical concepts of continuity (how things stay the same) and change. It is importantto give structure to this task and to set a time limit for its completion. The structure oflooking for five differences and five similarities gives focus to the task. It can bedifferentiated by asking more able children to look for more, or less able children tolook for fewer, if recording their findings is an issue. Ask children to work in pairs(see Figure 3.4 for sample boxes). This is an important basic resource: one whichcan be adapted for comparing anything: pictures, photographs of the same street ahundred years apart, maps and so on. The two boxes may then be used as the basis fora comparative piece of writing on the objects in the report genre.

Sequencing objects

If you have more than two objects, you can sequence them in order from the oldest tothe most recent. For example, if you have the two irons mentioned above and an early,

very heavy electric iron with a two-pin plug, you can ask the children to sequencethem (best done by asking volunteers to do this in front of the class) in order of age.For young children, it is advisable to stick to sequencing; older children can start tosequence using a timeline. Blank timelines are available commercially, or they canbe made. You can make your own decade markers and ask the children to place theirons on the timeline within ten years of when they think the irons were made andused. Ask the children who come out to the front and place them to give reasons fortheir decision.

Classroom museum

This is a very good activity for pulling together and communicating what has beenfound out about objects/artefacts. It is also valuable for literacy, and, if computers areused to make labels for objects and signs, an appropriate use for ICT. Have ready somecopies of examples of labels (enough for pairs), some which merely give information,and others which invite visitors to interact with the exhibits in some way. Give thechildren five minutes to sort the labels into information only/interaction and sharethe results. Tell the children they are going to make a classroom museum and allocatetasks: some pairs to do labels, other signs and background information depending onability. Ask others to set up the display and invite heads, parents and governors tovisit the museum. This may be done with objects on loan from a museum, or objectswhich children bring in themselves.

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In the box below write down five things about your objects which are different:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

In the box below write down five things about your objects which are the same:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Figure 3.4 Comparing old and new

Confused card index

This is a variant on the above activity and could be practised on ordinary everydayobjects before engaging in the project of making a classroom museum. One object isgiven to each child – they can be familiar everyday objects such as a clothes peg, aboard marker, a drawing-pin, a saucepan, a fork, a button and so on. Each child writesa catalogue card for his or her object and then takes turns reading them out, omittingthe name of the object. The rest of the group or class (depending on how you organ-ise it) has to match the card with the object. This is a useful exercise for both literacyand history. It helps children to develop their own classroom museum in that theylearn that they need to keep good records, in the same way that museum curatorsneed to do so. For literacy it is a good exercise in looking carefully at objects andin writing careful descriptions of them. The catalogue card is a particular genre ofnon-fiction writing and this task could usefully be done in a literacy lesson.

The riddle game

This is a game I have played with many classes with much enjoyment on the part ofboth the children and myself. I give the class some examples of Anglo-Saxon riddlesto solve (Figure 3.5). I then explain that each pair of children will be given an object

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1.

Oft I must strive with wind and wave, Battle them both when under the sea I feel out the bot-

tom, a foreign land. In lying still I am strong in the strife; If I fail in that they are stronger than I,

And wrenching me loose, soon put me to rout.They wish to capture what I must keep. I can mas-

ter them both if my grip holds out, If the rocks bring succour and lend support, Strength in the

struggle.Ask me my name!

2.

A moth ate a word.To me it seemed,A marvellous thing when I learned the wonder That a worm

had swallowed, in darkness stolen,The song of man, his glorious sayings,A great man’s strength;

and the thieving guest,Was no whit the wiser for the words it ate.

3.

In former days my father and mother,Abandoned me dead, lacking breath Or life or being.Then

one began, A kinswoman kind, to care for and love me; Covered me with her clothing, wrapped

me in her raiment, With the same affection she felt for her own; Until by the law of my life’s

shaping, Under alien bosom I quickened with breath. My foster mother fed me thereafter, Until

I grew sturdy and strengthened for flight.Then of her dear ones, of daughters and sons, She had

the fewer for what she did.

4.

My house is not quiet, I am not loud; But for us God fashioned our fate together. I am the swifter,

at times the stronger, My house more enduring, longer to last. At times I rest; my dwelling still

runs;Within it I lodge as long as I live. Should we two be severed, my death is sure.

Figure 3.5 Anglo-Saxon riddles

which they must look at carefully and try to keep hidden from the other children. Theobjects can be familiar or unfamiliar. The children then have to write down severalsentences giving certain information about the object, including some or all of thefollowing: its colour, shape, form, manufacture, function, the object being used, theplace where it is usually found and the people who might use it. They then use thislist of information as the basis for their riddle. They write their riddles and these areshared with the class, who have to guess from the riddles what the object is. Both theconfused cards and the riddles games have as part of their purpose helping childrento observe closely, write accurate descriptions, albeit in different genres, and to ‘see’that there is much more to an object than its name and purpose.

The feely bag

In many ways this is a generic activity, for the feely bag may be used in many ways inthe curriculum, not just in history. This is useful for a number of small artefacts, sayobjects which are used for writing. It might be done as part of an introduction to thehistory of writing, part of a sequence of activities which include comparing and con-trasting, and sequencing writing tools on a timeline. Have ready a cloth bag with theobjects inside. Place two chairs in the middle of your circle, or clear two spaces on thecarpet in front of you. Select two children, blindfold both and let one child take an ob-ject out of the bag. He or she can use all senses other than sight and describe the object.The other child has to ask questions of the first child and guess what the object is.

Story-making

This idea comes from Bage’s (2000) excellent book, Thinking History 4–14. The idea isthat ‘the story of an object is told through the actions or materials needed to produce,transport, sell, use and preserve it’ (Bage, 2000, p. 116.) This is suitable for both KeyStages 1 and 2. Bage gives the example of a Greek vase. I have used a similar idea atKey Stage 1 with an old teddy. This teddy had a price tag with the original pricecrossed out and a lower price written beneath. With a Year 1 class, I introduced him asan item from a box of artefacts I had taken in to use with the children. They examinedthe price tag with some interest and began to speculate as to where he had been beforehe arrived at the antique shop. We had the basis of a story here and we mapped out thefollowing stages:

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● Being made in the factory

● Transported by lorry to a toyshop

● Being priced and put on display

● A child begging his parents to buy the teddy

These are not the only possibilities of course, but this was the story we developed, andthe stages can form a plan for some extended story-writing.

Artefacts in context

As well as investigating artefacts in isolation, they can and should be investigatedin context. Although objects turn up far away from their original context (they doin my house anyway!), in investigating past societies through archaeology, items arealways found in a context which can give clues as to the object’s nature and function.For example, at a dig of a Roman site, television’s Time Team found fragments ofpottery and metal bowls, and speculated that, as they were in what they thoughtwas the kitchen area of a villa, these were used for cooking. While it might not seempractical to study archaeology in the classroom, there are various ways in which it canbe simulated.

Archaeology: Objects in context

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● Christmas morning for this child with the teddy as one of his presents

● Being a special teddy, going everywhere with the child

● Getting lost one day in a friend’s garden

● Friend’s mother finding teddy and putting him in a shed for many years

● Shed cleared out when they moved house: teddy sent to charity shop

● Myself buying him.

● Use a box with a glazed side and fill it with layers of different colours of soil,with grass on the top. Hide various objects within the layers. As a whole classactivity, ask for volunteers to dig to find the objects and the whole class to mapout the finds in three dimensions, thinking about what each object’s positioncan tell us.

● Classroom archaeology for 5-year-olds: The idea behind this is that one intro-duces the notion of objects found in context to very young children, throughthe approach of using (reasonably) everyday objects and a familiar context,that of a house and garden shed. There are some important points to bear inmind here. For your task, try to choose objects that would be found in differ-ent parts of a house which children would recognise, but include one or twoless familiar ones. This is actually classroom archaeology for 5-year-olds. Whenarchaeologists conduct a dig, they painstakingly record the position in whicheach item was found. One of the aims of the activity is to emulate the work of

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archaeologists, by placing objects within the context in which they are used orfound. This activity is also very valuable for the development of language andliteracy. Many adjectives may be used to describe the objects, and interestingobjects can generate talk. I have used a hot water bottle before now which hadthe children using words such as soft, furry, squishy, smelly, cuddly, cold,bumpy (it had ridges and a fleecy cover). The hand whisk was a source ofmuch interest also, and even 5-year-old Ben immediately made the connectionbetween this object and his mother’s electric whisk.

● Museum visits: Some museums are superb at re-creating Victorian streets,Viking villages or the interior of Roman villas. Here one can see objects in asituation, often with figures of people placed so that they appear to be usingthe objects. The advantage of this is that the various objects are placed in con-text and one can see how they may have been used.

Age of children: 4–5 years. Number of children: 6

Activity: Objects: Questioning and sorting

Learning purposes/objectives/outcomes● To experience questions being asked of modern-day artefacts (NC4).

● To learn how to ask such questions themselves (NC4).

● To explore and recognise features of objects in the made world (ELG).

● To learn about the everyday life of themselves and their families, now and in the past,

through handling everyday artefacts (NC2).

Content (What will the children do?)The children will each be given an object, which I have ready hidden in a bag.They may touch it

and use all their senses to observe the object. We will talk about each object and pass them

round. Each child will be given a picture/photo of their object and asked to place the object in

the most likely room in the house where it might be found. Thus children will complete the

display and record some of their understanding.

Where: On the carpet by the wall where my display is ready.

When: First session of the day before ‘fruit’ and play.

Organisation: My general assistant will be teaching and monitoring two groups; my nursery

nurse will take the other small group for painting. After play I will take the next group and the

children will revolve around the activities. We will repeat this later in the week. Tomorrow the

children will be planning their own activities (Highscope).

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Who: Green group first; then blue group after play.

Key areas of experience

● Knowledge and understanding of the world.

● Communication, language and literacy.

What I will do

I will gather the six children around me. I will show them my shopping bag and say I have

brought in some things to show them. I will get out each object and hand it to a child. I will

encourage the children to talk about the objects and I will ask the same few questions to model

them to the children:

● What do you think this is?

● What do you think it is made of?

● What does it feel like?

● Who might use it? How?

● Where in the house might you find it?

After any talk which these questions generate, I will ask each child to place the photo of their

object on the display in the room, or part of the house and shed where he or she thinks it may

be found.

If the children’s attention is wandering, I will move the activity on by introducing a new object.

I will ensure that each child has a turn at placing the photo on the display with Blutack.

Resources

● Bag of objects: familiar and not so familiar from around the house and garden.

● Ready-made pictures or photos of objects, laminated.

● Display base: house and shed drawn on card.

● Name labels for parts of the house: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room, garden shed.

● Blutack.

● Notebook to record who placed which object where and anything significant said by the

children.

Assessment (What will be recorded)

● Placing of objects.

● Talk which shows some understanding of objects or how what we use has changed compared

with what our parents/grandparents might have used.

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A final word

This chapter has been an introduction to the use of artefacts in history. The majorfocus has been historical enquiry and the use of imagination, but many links havebeen made to other subjects: science (enquiry and materials); design technology(design and function of objects); geography (objects in place as well as time); art(observation and drawing); and English (speaking and listening; using language tolabel and record; description and vocabulary extension; and creative writing in arange of genres). I hope you will see the links and use them creatively, for example, byusing a collection of artefacts to generate and teach the concepts of questions as aliteracy hour with Year 2, Term 3.

(Answers to riddles on p. 40: 1. Anchor 2. Book-moth 3. Cuckoo 4. Fish in river.)

Specific children

● Green Group: James, Darrell, John,Tracy, Lucille and Melissa.

● Blue Group: Lucy, Ben, Nicola, Jethro, Matthew and Sita.

Figure 3.6 Nursery/Reception lesson plan: objects in context

Introduction

In the course of a flight from London to Los Angeles, I generated a veritable documenttrail. My passport was the first item. There were a boarding pass and luggage receipt,the receipts for the coffee and croissant I consumed, the receipts for foot lotion andmoisturiser, the newspaper and novel I bought to read on the flight; the airport shuttlebus ticket and the map of Los Angeles I picked up on arrival. A detective following mytrail might have been able to deduce: that I had checked in one bag; where I sat in theplane; the possibility that I had not breakfasted before leaving the house; that I sufferfrom dry skin; my taste in books and my liking for crosswords; and that this was myfirst trip to Los Angeles. Most aspects of our lives are documented in some way and itis often the most trivial documents which reveal to others ordinary aspects of our lives.

Thus it can be in the past also. Recently on television I saw an example of a Romanpostcard sent from one army commander’s wife to another army commander’s wife,inviting her to her birthday party. There was very little writing on the postcard: themain message in very neat Latin script and a little message in less neat handwritingadded near the bottom of the right-hand side. It looked as if the lady had dictated themain part to a scribe (from the neat handwriting) and added her own personal mes-sage of love and friendship afterwards. I thought that this was a wonderful document.It was amazing that it had survived (the original is very fragile and in the BritishMuseum) to be found in the remains of a fort not far from Hadrian’s Wall. I found itwonderful because up until that time I had not known that the Romans celebratedtheir birthdays. We can glean from it that this lady was wealthy enough to employ ascribe to write her letters for her. We can also begin to imagine and to wonder: Whatwas it like for the wife of a commander, in this cold, damp outpost of the RomanEmpire, passing the time until his posting was over and they could return to theirhome? How did Romans celebrate their birthdays?

For the purposes of history, documents are written or printed pieces of raw sourcematerial from the past. Documents are an important source of historical evidence andit is a requirement of the History National Curriculum that teachers use them for

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CHAPTER 4

Using written sources

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senquiry with children (DfEE, 1999c). The range of possible documents is huge andone’s selection of documents for classroom use depends on several factors: what youwant the children to learn; the kind of historical enquiry being undertaken; and thecontext of the enquiry. This chapter offers suggestions for teaching activities usinga range of documents, some described in detail and some outlined. One importantpoint to bear in mind is that documents should be used in context. For example, ifone were to use a replica of the Roman postcard described above, it might be in thecontext of an enquiry about the lives of people in the Roman army in Britain. If oneplanned to use a page from a school log, it might be in the context of a local study onthe school and its immediate surroundings. They may be used to start an enquiry or,during the course of one, to add further evidence or to corroborate a point. Below is alist (not exhaustive) of document types which one could use with children:

● personal documents such as diaries, appointment cards, bank statements

● reports of the medical officer of health

● charters and land grants

● autobiographies

● gaol records

● diaries

● letters

● newspapers

● census records

● trade directories

● school logs and archives

● inventories and wills

● advertisements

● workhouse records

● seaside town guides

Obviously there is an important link to be made to the English curriculum, partic-ularly in terms of the wide range of non-fiction genres represented in historicaldocuments. Potentially there is a superb source of texts for the literacy hour, espe-cially at Key Stage 2. However, many teachers consider documents to be far toodifficult to use with children. They think that the children lack the necessary readingskills to cope with such demanding texts, yet there are ways of making such textsaccessible to children. It should be remembered that often the text in children’s topicbooks can be difficult also in terms of vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure;

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m yet teachers do not hesitate to use these texts with children. The teacher has animportant role to play in mediating the process of reading and understandingdocuments, and in building children’s confidence in doing so. Fines and Nichol (1997)recommend the following activities in tackling a document with children:

● whole class teaching

● constant rewards for success

● rapid scanning of the text

● repeated scanning of the text

● tasks of carefully graded difficulty

(Fines and Nichol, 1997, p. 83)

● looking at the text in its original form (often with ‘old-fashioned’ handwriting)

● asking children to pick out one word or phrase in the original text

● showing children a typed transcription for ease of reading

● asking children to pick out certain things (e.g. names of people and places)

● asking children to look for words which mean something in particular

● asking children what the overall document means from what they know so far

● reading whole document with the class following the text

● bags of praise at every stage

● Make tape-recordings of the text as a support to reading. This is very impor-tant for less able children and those with reading difficulties.

● Cut up a text into short pieces, a sentence or so at most. Ask each pair ofchildren to work on their own fragment of the text and pool the results (withlots of praise of course).

I would suggest as a generic process:

The praise is of central importance in building confidence and it is impossible tooverdo it. We need to make children feel good about the tasks we set them. Readingold documents can be difficult and challenging. We need to attend to the emotionalaspect of doing the task and offer rewards for each little thing children get right, evenif it is only one word or phrase, or a hypothesis which may not be the most likely onebut shows they are thinking.

There are other strategies one may also use:

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Teaching ideas using documents

In this section of the chapter, there are descriptions and brief outlines of what en-quiries can be developed using some examples from the list of document types givennear the start of this chapter, and the possible contexts and themes of the enquiries.Many of the documents are obtainable from local records offices; increasingly, copiesof such documents are being made available online. There is one maxim of extremeimportance to remember when using documents with children:

YOU NEED TO ACTIVELY TEACH THE DOCUMENT TYPE FIRST BEFORE YOU GIVETHEM AN EXAMPLE FROM THE PAST.

Personal documents such as diaries, appointment cards, bank statements

As a way into historical enquiry, I suggest creating a fictional character, using, say:a diary page; a bank statement; a couple of appointment cards; a letter; a printede-mail; and some receipts for purchases. This paper trail, along with some descriptivedetails about your character, can form the ‘evidence’ for an enquiry about a missingperson, or someone who collapses in a public place and is rushed to hospital. Thechildren can then be set the task of finding out as much as possible about the charac-ter, including her identity, from the documents. The value of this kind of activitylies in getting children to think about how documents can tell us a great deal abouta person. They can learn how to select from different kinds of evidence, and to putevidence together to reach an answer or a hypothesis. Using a computer, it is very easyto ‘create’ a character from imaginary personal documents such as these. Work incharacter-building by creating a set of documents can form the basis of charactercreation in story-writing.

Reports of the medical officer of health

The context for this kind of document might be an enquiry into public health in thenineteenth or early twentieth century. For example, in an examination of modern-dayrecords of deaths, we can work out what the main causes of deaths are nowadays. Thechildren can then be shown a table from a particular area (again the local area is good)and asked what condition the greatest number of people died from. A study of thetable for York in 1909 reveals that the main killers were heart disease, tuberculosis,cancer, pneumonia, bronchitis, stroke, premature birth, developmental diseases,

● Act out parts of the text. Stop the reading or the recording and act out, say,giving a present, or hiding under a desk during a bombing raid.

● Prompt the children to ask the questions about what is puzzling them in thetext, rather than what you find of interest.

and old age! Children could be encouraged to ask questions about a modern and anineteenth-century table, and about diseases of which they may not have heard. Theycould then compare the two tables and look at similarities and differences. The wholeenquiry could be driven along by an overarching question on whether people wereless healthy in that time, or why certain diseases were fatal in those times.

Charters and land grants

These can be valuable for local study or for work on the Anglo-Saxons. The enquirymight have as its focus the village where the school is located. Such a study cancombine history, geography and other subjects in, for example, creating with thechildren a virtual fieldwork trip around the village. One part of the website could bedevoted to the history of the village and there are many possible ways of presentingthis. The origins of the village, the place-name and parish boundaries may often befound in old charters. I have used a copy of the grant by Offa, King of the Mercians,to St Peter’s Church, Westminster, of land at Aldenham, Herts, AD 785, with Year 5children in a small primary school within the parish. The activity I do with them is totrace the outline of the boundaries on a copy of the local map of the area and see ifthey can find any names or places which are boundary markers in the charter. Someof the places are easily found (e.g. the bend on Watling Street); others may only bediscovered by using the modern parish boundary. Obviously this combines well withusing maps as evidence (see Chapter 6) and with work on a timeline of the local area,events and changes within it.

Autobiographies or books of memories

These can be useful for adding colour and detail of past periods being studied. Theyhave the added advantage of being written in narrative form, which is more easilyaccessible than some other genres and documents. An example of this is given inCameo 2 (Chapter 1).

Using letters

This is an example of some teaching I did with a Year 4 class during a term’s work onthe Tudors. I typed in large print three letters from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. I toldthe children a story about Henry VIII, the reason why he wanted a son as heir to thethrone and about Catherine of Aragon’s inability to have any more children (she hadhad seventeen pregnancies altogether). I did not tell them any names, but the storyput the letters into context. I then showed them the letters and said they were fromthis king to someone special. We focused on one in particular (shown in Figure 4.1, asannotated by a child from the class). I asked the children what the heart shape usuallyrepresented and they suggested Valentines. I said it was a clue as to what the letterwas about. They instantly suggested a love letter. They were able to work out that H

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Figure 4.1 Henry VIII letter

stood for Henry and AB for Anne Boleyn. I told them he wrote some letters in French,and translated his signing-off line for them. I asked them to highlight or underline allthe words in the letter to do with time and love, using one colour for each. I askedthem what they felt like when waiting for something exciting, such as Christmas orbirthdays, and they said it was a feeling of ‘I can’t wait for it!’ I said this was howHenry felt, longing to see Anne but having to wait. I asked for examples of time wordsand I read through the references to time. Next I asked for examples of words to dowith love. Finally, I read the third letter aloud with them following, and asked themwhat the letter was about. They were able to tell me it was a love letter and that Henrywas longing to see Anne. I asked them what the letter told us about Henry and Anne,and again they were able to say that he was madly in love with her. We then tried tothink of as many reasons as we could why Henry had divorced Catherine of Aragon,and the children came up with the following:

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1 Catherine of Aragon was too old to have any more babies.

2 She only had a girl.

3 Henry wanted a son to be a strong ruler and keep the kingdom peaceful.

4 He was madly in love with Anne Boleyn.

I asked them to write their reasons around the border of their letters and most wereable to put down two or three reasons. One of my learning purposes was that theyshould understand that causation can be complex, and that there can be more thanone reason for something happening. They had read a difficult text with help and hadlearned a great deal. The word ‘rex’ meaning ‘king’ stayed with them right up until theend of term and they were proud to have learned a Latin word.

Using gaol records

This is an example of teaching I did with the same Year 6 class with whom I worked onthe ‘Story of the Transports’ (see Chapter 7). I taught them history, literacy and musicfor two consecutive Friday mornings. As part of the second week’s work I wanted toconcentrate on the citizenship aspects of the story, staying with the themes of law andorder, crime and punishment and what societies do with those people who break therules. I started by reminding the children of the story and the fact that whatever oursympathies were for Henry and Susannah, they had both stolen property from otherpeople. I asked them to suggest ten crimes which might be committed nowadays andI would list them on the board. Soon we had a long list of crimes on the board. I theninvited the children to think of the sorts of punishment which might be given for eachof the crimes. They came up with largely appropriate ones: life imprisonment for themore serious crimes; shorter sentences for others; fines and cautions, or suspended

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ssentences for the rest. We had some discussion over whether the aim of the punish-ment was for the convicted people to suffer or if it was meant to help them reform andcommit no more crimes.

After this I showed them the gaol records from Hertford County for 1842 (Figures 4.2,4.3 and 4.4). I wanted to use local records so that they would recognise the place-namesand start to imagine the people in these familiar places in the nineteenth century. Iasked the children to look at them carefully and to ask me about anything they did notunderstand. This was a valuable teaching approach, for it meant that the children wereasking questions of the evidence. Here are some of their questions:

Who was John Holland?

What did 2/6 mean?

What was ‘ag.st his beer licence’?

What was ‘ag.st the Highway Act’?

Who was Charlotte?

What is vagrancy?

Is stealing peas a crime?

Is neglecting your wife a crime?

What were the Game Laws?

What was hard labour?

What did ‘cal.’ mean?

There are enough questions here for several enquiries. Some were easily explained,such as vagrancy and the Game Laws. We could make comparisons with today, sincewe have all seen homeless people in the streets. The ‘old’ money proved most difficultto explain. I drew comparison tables on the board, but in retrospect I would have hadsomething already prepared, perhaps as a handout. I then showed them an extractfrom the gaol records of Hertford County for 1857. By now the abbreviation forcalendar month (‘cal.’) was familiar to them. More questions tumbled out: ‘What wasa waist ribbon? Why would anyone want to steal manure?’ ‘Why were all the crimesof stealing on this page?’ ‘Was there more stealing going on than there had been in1842?’ ‘If there was, what did this mean?’ ‘Were times harder in 1857 than they werein 1842?’ One child pointed out that the punishments were more severe than they hadbeen in 1842 and we discussed the possibilities. Was there a different judge for thearea who liked to give hard labour rather than fines? Was hard labour seen as more ofa deterrent? Was there more crime, or at least more theft in 1857 and were the courtscracking down on it? Many lines of enquiry sprang from such simple documents. The

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NAME RESIDENCE, &c. DATE OF CONVICTION OFFENCE PUNISHMENT

James Sandon June 1 1842 Assaulting John Holland Fine 2/6

James Sandon June 1 1842 Assaulting John Holland Fine 2/6

William Sandon June 1 1842 Assaulting John Holland Fine 2/6

Henry Saint Andrew June 4 1842 Neglecting his wife 14 days Hard Labour

John Caddington June 7 1842 ag.st his beer licence Fine £2

Charles Hemel Hempstead June 9 1842 ag.st the Highway Act Fine 6s

William Hemel Hempstead June 13 1842 Destroying a fence Fine 5s

William Royston June 15 1842 Assaulting Charlotte Fine 2/6

Thomas Hemel Hempstead July 11 1842 Vagrancy 1 cal. Month Hard Labour

John Hemel Hempstead July 13 1842 Stealing walnuts Fine 5/3

William July 19 1842 Stealing peas Fine 1/

Henry Kings Langley July 27 1842 ag.st his beer licence Fine 8/6

Benjamin Much Haddam July 27 1842 Stealing peas Fine 5/

John Albury July 27 1842 ag.st the Game Laws Fine £1

James Paisley August 2 1842 Vagrancy 14 days Hard Labour

John Buckland August 3 1842 ag.st the Game Laws Fine £1

John Standon August 8 1842 ag.st the Game Laws Fine £5

Figure 4.2 Hertford county gaol record: Extract from 1842: typed version

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Figure 4.3 Hertford county gaol record: Extract from 1857: original version

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NAME RESIDENCE, &c. DATE OF CONVICTION OFFENCE PUNISHMENT

Cavington Thomas North Mimms 27th December 1857 Stealing fowls 3 cal. Months Hard Labour

Lees William the younger Bengeo 8th July 1857 Stealing clothes 3 cal. Months Hard Labour

Camfu Sarah Saint Andrew 17th June 1857 Stealing boards 4 days Hard Labour

Beeton John Buntingford 9th October 1857 Stealing a pair of boots 2 Months Hard Labour

Seaell Robert Royston 1st April 1857 Stealing seeds 2 cal. Months Hard Labour

Oakman John Therfield 1st April 1857 Stealing oats 2 cal. Months Hard Labour

Ambrose Thomas Sandon 17th June 1857 Stealing one shawl 3 cal. Months Hard Labour

Edwards Edward Therfield 17th June 1857 Stealing 2 pieces of oak wood 14 days Hard Labour

Eldwin John Therfield 15th July 1857 Stealing a shovel 2 cal. Months Hard Labour

Parker Thomas Wallington 15th July 1857 Stealing one brush 3 cal. Months Hard Labour

Bygrave George Stevenage 24th September 1857 Stealing wood 2 cal. Months Hard Labour

Plumb John Wakeley 26th June 1857 Stealing 10 hens eggs 14 days Hard Labour

Hine Sarah Ann Ware 10th February 1857 Stealing 1 cart load of manure 10 days Hard Labour

Wallis Sarah Ann Ware 11th February 1857 Stealing a waist ribbon 12 cal. Months Hard Labour

Ware 11th February 1857 Stealing 1 silver neck ribbon 11 cal. Months Hard Labour

Valentine Mary Ann Great Amwell 30th June 1857 Stealing 1 glass 6 weeks Hard Labour

Draper Edward Stevenage 8th October 1857 Stealing wheat 3 weeks Hard Labour

Figure 4.4 Hertford county gaol record: Extract from 1857: typed version

important point about this activity was the questioning. The questions sprangdirectly from the children’s encounter with the primary evidence of the gaol records,and not from myself as teacher. This is not to say that the teacher should not have asteering role in initiating and following through an enquiry such as this which useslocal records; only that it is important for children to generate questions as part of theprocess of historical enquiry.

Using diaries

An obvious example of a diary to use is that of Samuel Pepys. There is a very accessibleeyewitness account of the Great Fire which can be used in a variety of ways. It is,in its original form, in too demanding language for Year 2 (the year group the Unitis aimed at) but, read with a good range of expression, recorded and played back tothe children, it becomes an exciting account of a day and night of grave danger. I wouldactively teach the concept of ‘eyewitness account’ probably by using such an account,perhaps a two-minute clip from TV news or from a local paper on a fire, storm, earth-quake, accident or similar shocking event. With Year 2, I would have certain sentenceswhich contain vivid descriptions on cards: sentences such as ‘Everybody endeavouringto remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters thatlay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them,and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside toanother.’ I would then ask the children to describe (with help if need be) the picture intheir minds from the description in the sentence. The whole class task would then beto create a composite drawing or painting from the evidence. Older children couldanalyse the whole diary extract, again working in pairs so that each pair has a sentence.Paragraphs could thus be tackled in groups, with one person from each group feedingback to the class what the paragraph is saying. One possibility is to prepare a role-play.The teacher needs to prepare five cards: Samuel Pepys; the King; Adviser 1; Adviser 2;and the Lord Mayor of London. Each card contains two or three suggestions forwhat the character might say. Pepys is arguing for the tearing down of houses to preventthe spread of the fire. Adviser 1 can agree and argue with him that houses shouldbe destroyed; Adviser 2 can worry about the value of property and the loss of homes.Using the cards, choose five children to enact the scene in the King’s Chamber.From this the children can write: a newspaper account, containing an eyewitnessaccount, perhaps with key figures arguing for the destruction of houses; a play scriptfor the scene in the chamber; or their own explanation for why the fire spread soquickly, possibly using an explanation writing frame (Wray and Lewis, 1997) to supporttheir writing in this genre. Useful sources for documents on Pepys may be found at

http://www.pepys.info/fire.htmlhttp://www.primaryhistory.org/fileLibrary/pdf/Pepys_and_the_Great_Fire_of_London_resource_a.pdf

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For further ideas on using documents, the English Heritage book is excellent(Davies and Webb, 1996).

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● Set the document into context by using story, drama or artefact, examples ofillustration to help make it meaningful for the children;

● Actively teach the document types using analogies and modern examples;

● Use the generic process on page 48 to draw children into the document;

● Give masses of praise and encouragement to the children;

● Make the document part of a larger enquiry into a historical situation;

● Bear in mind you do not always have to read the whole document;

● Employ the strategy of sometimes letting children ask the questions.

The general principles of using documents have been shown to be:

We live in a world in which the visual image is extremely powerful and influential.Communicating through images seems to be a natural human instinct, from the cavedrawings of early peoples to modern glossy magazines, in which images are used tosell goods and lifestyles. The visual image is very useful and valuable in teachinghistory. From an early age children are accustomed to seeing and enjoying visualimages of all kinds: for example, television images, picture books, comics, magazinesand internet pages. The iconic representation or visual image is one of Bruner’s threeways of mentally representing the world. Visual images are immensely powerful, as allmedia and advertising people know, and children need to be able to ‘read’ and interpreta wide range of images to cope with life in general. However, images are also both animportant source of evidence about the past and a marvellous teaching resource forhistory. Although they are obviously a different form of communication and expres-sion from written sources, they are none the less kinds of text, which can be ‘read’ andinterpreted. Teachers need a good understanding of how to use visual images of allkinds in teaching history; practical knowledge of obtaining and preparing pictures foruse; and a broad range of teaching approaches and activities to use with pictures andphotographs of all kinds. This chapter gives an introduction to all of these aspects ofteachers’ knowledge, understanding and skills for using the visual image in history.

Knowing the available sources

Types of image

There are many different kinds of image one can use. For those in the list below oneneeds to include reproductions, since obviously famous paintings are too valuableand are unavailable to take into schools. There are many good-quality reproductionsone can use.

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Visual images

● paintings of scenes;

● portraits, single and group;

Obtaining and preparing images for use

It has never been easier to get hold of pictures for use in classrooms. The internet isan excellent source of images of all kinds, but there are all sorts of other ways toobtain pictures. The fundamental requirement is that all pupils must be able to seethe images and this has implications for resourcing.

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● pictures and photographs of an object or objects;

● pictures and photographs of historical scenes;

● artists’ reconstructions of scenes from the past;

● engravings and reproductions of engravings;

● cartoons;

● still images from video or film.

● Large posters, say of a Greek Trireme, an Eyptian tomb or a Tudor kitchen:these may be put on display near the carpet area for use during a circle session.

● Black and white or colour overhead transparencies. These are excellent if youdo not have a carpet area, or if you have the kind of class whom you like tokeep firmly in their seats! These are an excellent way of focusing attention,especially the colour transparencies.

● Sets of photographs on various topics: for example, Collins do a very good‘Starting History Skills Pack’ for Key Stage 1, with pictures of domestic objects,three or four for each item from 1900 to the present day, and pairs of scenes ontopics such as leisure and washing from 1900 up to the present day.

● Sets of images from ‘free’ sources: if doing a topic on houses and homes,collect estate agents’ details in hard copy or from the internet, with images ofhouses of different ages, for comparison and discussion activities. Print orcopy the photographs and get them laminated.

● More free sources: the Argos catalogue is a useful source of pictures of famil-iar objects and one can use them for comparison purposes, especially withFoundation and Key Stage 1.

● Sets of pictures/photos: always aim to have one between two. I learned thehard way that one picture per group does not work. The children will needto keep turning the picture round to look at it properly and there is scopefor squabbling there. Thus you need a minimum of 16 pictures/photos for aclass of 30.

Remember: A set of pictures, laminated for durability, is often a better resource forteaching history than a commercially produced pack on a particular topic.

How to use images

Once you have obtained your image, how do you use it with children? There are manyways of using images and this chapter can only give you an introduction. Armed withthis, you should be able to make a start on using pictures in the classroom. The listbelow comes from Fines and Nichol’s excellent book Teaching Primary History (1997,p. 129), now, alas, out of print.

Generic stages

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● Boot fairs and junk shops can be a source of photos and pictures of all kinds: Iuse a picture of children playing cricket in the street from the 1930s as a start-ing point for all sorts of things: pastimes, games, play areas, traffic, clothingand so on. A wedding photograph from the 1960s can serve as a stimulus toinvestigating fashion from that period.

● Images from children’s topic books may be copied from the books (if needbe) and laminated for use. For the ancient Greeks I use a selection of picturesof Greek pots from children’s topic books, one book between two, as anintroduction to all aspects of Greek life and culture.

● Images from the internet can be used. Museums often have images of objects intheir collection; galleries have images of paintings they hold which may beprinted and duplicated (or made into colour transparencies) for classroom use.

● Collections from the art resource cupboard can be put into dual service forboth art and history. My copy of Bruegel’s Children’s Games came from justsuch a pack. I made 16 colour copies and had them laminated.

● If you have an interactive whiteboard and internet connection in yourclassroom, you can use images directly from the internet: this opens up awealth of possibilities.

1 scanning;

2 observing and focusing;

3 questioning: a continuous process;

4 entering into the picture to understand what the scene might have meant tothe people who were alive then;

5 using other sources to find out about the scene;

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Putting all this together: teaching activities using pictures

CASE STUDY: BABY’S BIRTHDAY

This is a picture which I found in a Longman’s pack, ‘A Sense of History’ for Key Stage 1.It was painted by Frederick Daniel Hardy and was first exhibited in 1867. It is a wonderfulpicture, incredibly rich in potential for teaching across the whole of the primary agerange.The picture shows a family of mother and father and five children (or possiblyone maid and four children) about to celebrate their baby’s first birthday. Father isopening the door to an older couple, who, from the gift of a doll in their hands, wouldseem to be grandparents. It is clear from the objects in the room, the work table withsewing items and fabric, the cooking utensils by the fire and the toys, that this is wherethe family work, cook, eat and play. Using Fines and Nichol’s generic framework, this ishow I have used the picture. For Key Stage 1 it may be used to teach children about thelives of men, women and children at different levels of society from the past, fromperiods beyond living memory. For Key Stage 2 it may be used to teach children aboutlives of men, women and children at different levels of society in Victorian times.Theapproaches used draw upon some of the wide range of teaching approaches presented inthis book.

Teaching and learning activities

6 the recording of findings and perceptions;

7 hypothesising, speculating, interpreting, synthesising;

8 the presentation of views.

1 To get the children scanning the picture and looking at the detail, I play ‘I Spy’.This is done simply by dividing the class into two teams, A and B. Each childfrom each team takes a turn at finding an object in the picture and saying: ‘Ispy with my little eye, something beginning with. . . .’ If no one can spot theobject, the turn passes to the other team. This is good for observation skills inhistory, and for onset letter names and letter sounds in English.

2 By this time the children have usually been asking questions of the pictureanyway, whispering to me as children take their turn (‘Is that a bird in the cageup there?’, ‘Is that the granny and granddad?’, ‘What’s that stuff on the plateby the fire?’). I get each child to think of a question to ask about the picture. Inanswering them, I sometimes call upon children in the class to answer, andsometimes explain myself.

3 Now we start to enter into the picture: I ask the children to count with me thepeople in the picture and then the children in the picture. By now we would

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These ideas are just a beginning. Through the activities suggested here the childrencan start to tackle the overarching question: What was it like for ordinary people to livein Victorian times? The people in the picture are not the very poorest of the poor. Theyhave work, on the evidence of the sewing items and some possessions: a toby jug, asampler, pictures, toys, crockery (though not matching) and some furniture. They evenhave pets: a cat and a canary. Yet they basically live in one room, the door of whichopens directly on to the street; seven people living, working and eating in the same

have established that someone in the room does the sewing. From the heavymilitary jacket lying on the table it would seem to be the father. I suggest wename all the people in the picture with suitably Victorian or old-fashionednames. Examples children have suggested are: Mr and Mrs Taylor, Elizabethfor the oldest girl, Mary for the girl with the baby on her lap, Albert for the boy,Charlotte for the girl trying to share a stool with him, and Victoria for thebaby. There is usually some discussion over whether the older couple at thedoor are her parents or his. Once this is settled, they can either be the Taylors(senior) or another surname.

4 Getting right inside the picture: I tell the children we will make a freeze frameof the scene in the picture. The children are usually so keen to do this that Iwill do this twice or three times to give children a turn, 18 or 27 children outof the class instead of only nine. The children volunteer for roles and may lookclosely at the picture to work out their position and pose. I give them space atthe front of the class or on the carpet and count them down to the freezeframe. After this we applaud and praise the children.

5 I ask the children to return to their seats and to close their eyes and imaginethey are one person in the room and that it is five minutes before the grand-parents knock on the door. I then ask the children to tell me in turn one eventthey think will have been happening in the room at that point in time. Theysuggest, for example, the boy and girl fighting over the stool or the toy, or themother fussing over the food.

6 I have ready two outline versions of the picture (these are easily made by draw-ing a rough outline of the shapes of people and large objects in the picture). Ishow an overhead transparency of a page from a comic and check that all thechildren know and understand ‘speech bubbles’ and ‘think bubbles’. I ask thechildren to write speech bubbles for their character and some of the otherpeople in the picture. With the second sheet I ask them to make and fill inthink bubbles of what the characters are thinking and feeling. These activitiescan either stand alone, as outcomes of the work for younger children, or formthe basis of imaginative pieces of writing for older children. I have had olderchildren writing a short imaginative piece on the scene at a moment in timefive minutes before that which is shown in the picture.

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m space. They have brick floors and a rag rug: their only source of heat in the picture isthe fire. The evidence in this picture paints a very clear portrait of life among theskilled artisans of the nineteenth century. From a literacy point of view, it serves as asuperb stimulus to creative imaginative writing as well as a source for literacy games.In terms of themes in the picture one could explore houses and homes, birthdays in thepresent and in the past, clothing, and the kinds of work people did in their own homes.One could compare the interior of this cottage with the interior of a grand home, toexamine the lives of people at different levels of society. This is an excellent resourcewhich may be used economically with children across the whole primary age range.

Twenty generic activities to do with pictures

How you use pictures will depend partly on the kind of picture and partly on yourpurposes. The picture may be used to initiate an enquiry at the beginning of a unitof work, or as corroborating evidence as part of an enquiry, or to present a differentperspective on material already examined. This list is only a beginning, and as youwork with pictures more ideas will come to you.

1 With two pictures of the same object (e.g. irons) use a similar sheet to the onefor comparing two artefacts (see Figure 3.4). Ask the children to find fivefeatures which are different and five features which are the same. In doingthis they will be comparing and contrasting, and dealing with the overarchinghistorical concepts of change (difference) and continuity (similarity).

2 With three pictures of the same type of object, ask the children to sequencethem on a timeline. With younger children use a marker such as very old, oldand new. With older children you can use date markers.

3 Compare and contrast two pictures of the same scene (say, for local history,possibly their own High Street) or two pictures of beach scenes, or old andnew shops. Again, look for similarities and differences.

4 Print off an object from a museum collection (e.g. one of the Sutton Hoo treas-ures from the British Museum). Make it into a colour overhead transparency.Show it to the children and ask them what skills the people who made it mighthave to have had. Ask the children to make a list. What does this tell us aboutthese people?

5 With a large ‘busy’ picture such as Baby’s Birthday play the game of ‘I Spy’. Thisgets children observing closely and practising initial letter sounds and names.Divide the class into two teams, A and B. B can go first. Play according tonormal rules. This is a very good starting point with the right kind of picture.

6 Using all sorts of pictures, count the number of people in the picture. With asmaller number, give the people names and ages. Ask each child in the class towrite a speech bubble and/or a think bubble for a chosen character. Older

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children could write a paragraph imagining themselves as one of the charac-ters and writing down their thoughts. This can produce some high-qualitycreative writing about the people and events in the picture.

7 Take the children back to a point five minutes before or five minutes after thescene in the picture. Using volunteers, create a freeze frame of that momentin time, or of the moment of the picture itself.

8 Show a picture of which only a fragment has survived (e.g. a mosaic, a pot ora piece of jewellery). Ask the children to complete the picture.

9 Encourage the children to ask questions about the picture. For example, I onceshowed a class of 8- and 9-year-olds a picture of Queen Elizabeth I beingcarried on a litter by some courtiers in a procession. I let the children askquestions and did my best to answer them. They were very interested in theruffs, and I explained about their significance. This was one piece of learningwhich stayed with them once the term was over. The questioning session onthe carpet went on for 20 minutes without any loss of attention.

10 With an artist’s reconstruction of a past scene, say an Anglo-Saxon village, aViking boat or a Roman town, set activities which invite the children into thepicture. If they were an Anglo-Saxon, which would be their hut? Where wouldthey keep their treasures? Which of the children would they be?

11 Go for a ‘walk’ through the picture. Invite the children to imagine they arewalking through it and ask them to describe the scene using all their senses.

12 Ask what might be happening outside the frame of the picture.

13 Ask the children to provide a title and a caption for the picture.

14 Ask the children: (1) what the picture tells them; and (2) what the picture doesnot tell them.

15 Ask the children on what evidence the picture was based: did the artist sit andmake sketches, or paint from life, or might it be an imagined scene?

16 Play a game of giving the children one minute to look at a picture. It is thencovered up and the children have one minute to make a list of what they haveseen.

17 Ask the children to make a list of three or five facts (depending on the kind ofpicture and the ability of the children) their picture tells them about life inthat period.

18 Divide the children into groups. Ask each group to focus in on one part of thepicture, using a magnifying glass if necessary, and to prepare a description ofthis one part.

19 Ask the children which character in the picture they would like to be and why.

20 Use several pictures from the same period to tell a story.

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Portraits deserve a separate section, since they require detailed analysis coupled withan understanding of the type of evidence they present. Prior to the advent of photog-raphy, film and television, portraits were one of the main ways for ordinary peopleto ‘see’ or have an image of their king or queen. It was an important aspect ofthe painter’s work to flatter the sitter; otherwise, in the case of people such as Tudormonarchs, the consequences could be unpleasant. At the very least the portrait wouldbe suppressed and no copies would be allowed to be made of it for dispersal around thecountry. Portraits are a valuable source of evidence for investigating wealthy people,and, as long as one understands that they may not be an entirely accurate image of thesitter, they can still yield important information. Below is an account of a lesson Itaught on Henry VIII (using the Holbein portrait). It is based on work on portraits inFines and Nichol (1997). I was working with the same Year 4 class as described inChapters 5 and 10. I pinned up a large version of this picture from a commercial pack,and asked the children who this person was. They knew it was Henry VIII despitehaving little knowledge of the Tudors at this stage, it being the third lesson in a term’swork. I said we were going to learn how to analyse portraits using five headings:

● facial expression

● body language/pose

● dress

● props and setting

● artist’s role

I modelled several facial expressions for them and they had to guess what emotion Iwas expressing. They were sent to tables in pairs to model, draw the facial expression,guess it and swap over after five minutes. I asked them to share some of their expres-sions. I then modelled several poses representing fear, confidence, tiredness and hap-piness, and the children had to guess what these were. Volunteers came up anddemonstrated their own poses: Gavin, for example, slumped on the floor to representtiredness. We then moved on to dress. I put on my hunger marcher’s outfit of oldraincoat and cloth cap (see Chapter 8): the children thought I looked like a gardener. Iasked what my normal clothes showed and was horrified to learn I looked like a post-woman! Making a mental note to change my teaching wardrobe, I moved on to propsand setting. For this we examined those in the portrait itself: Henry’s gloves and sword,and the rich hangings and carpets in the room. Finally, we discussed what wouldhappen if the portrait had not made Henry look good. (‘The artist would have had hishead chopped off, Miss!’) I sent them away to work in pairs to analyse the Holbeinportrait. Three weeks later when we had moved on to Queen Elizabeth I, I showed

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Figure 5.1 Child’s work: Review on the portrait of Elizabeth I

them a copy of the Armada portrait as a colour overhead, and with very little revisionother than the headings, asked them to analyse this portrait (available online at:http://pavlov.psyc.queensu.ca/~psyc382/grower.html).

The children were able to do this more or less independently, which meant that mylearning objectives for the series of lessons had been achieved. Figure 5.1 shows thework of one child. There is much more to be gained from the portrait in terms ofsymbolism, but this was due to be dealt with in a subsequent lesson on the Armada.However, it was a useful start for children tackling the portrait on their own.

English Heritage has a useful booklet on using portraits with children, andcontains many more teaching ideas. The National Portrait Gallery also has packs ofTudor portraits and materials on how to use them. For teachers starting out on usingportraits, the ideas in this section are a useful beginning. Pictures, photographs andportraits are kinds of texts which may be ‘read’ and interpreted. It is important togive children the skills to work with images of all kinds, and to be able to interpretsymbolism, facial expression and so on.

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We live in a country that is richer than any other in the visible remains of the past, but . . .most of us are visually illiterate.

(Hoskins, 1967, p. 32)

This country is indeed rich in visible remains from the past: hill forts, castles, greathouses, churches, abbeys, cathedrals and other religious buildings, walled towns,Roman villas, Stonehenge and burial mounds are obvious forms of evidence. Butwhile such sites are obvious, there is also history in ordinary everyday sites, suchas buildings housing banks, restaurants, schools, railways stations, public houses,shops and factories. The routes of transport – roads, railways, canals, ancient tracks,packhorse routes, drove roads, bridleways – are all evidence from the past, as is thelandscape itself with its record of human activity and interaction with it. Thelandscape is a rich historical environment, and is eminently suitable for historicalenquiry with children. Although it can be very valuable to take children to grand andimportant sites, it is just as useful to use what is right on one’s doorstep. A walkthrough the local area with a treasure hunt-style trail for children to follow can revealall sorts of interesting things and provoke questions:

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The historical environmentMaps, sites, visits and museums

● A pawnshop (What was pawning? Why did people do it?)

● A post-box with GR on it and another with ER on it (Why are the lettersdifferent?)

● A horse trough with Metropolitan Police engraved on it (Why is this here?)

● A street sign: Gallows Lane (Is this where people got hung?)

● A war memorial (What was this for?)

These are all genuine examples taken from local study walks. One important learningoutcome for such walks, or indeed for any local study or site visit, is to develop obser-vation skills in children. To do so is crucial for developing visual literacy acrossthe curriculum in general and in history in particular. This chapter is devoted to the

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m historical environment, local study, and visits to sites and museums. Because work onmaps and plans can be a part of local study, using them in history is dealt with here.There are obvious links to geography, and a local study can integrate history andgeography work.

Using maps and plans

One of the compulsory study units in the Key Stage 2 History National Curriculum isNo. 7, Local history study. At Key Stage 1 children need to study changes in their ownlives and in the way of life of their families, those around them, or people in the moredistant past. A good way into local study is through using maps. This chapter gives abrief introduction to using maps with children. A map is a ‘model’ of a reality, whichextracts certain elements and represents them symbolically in various forms. Mapsare a record of change and continuity in a landscape and can be very useful as astarting point for local history study, or study of change. The following section givesa brief selection of activities using maps and plans.

Map and plan activities

● Comparing and contrasting old and new maps: For your local area, find amodern map and an old map of the area (often available in libraries or localrecords offices). Select an area (it might include the local primary school)and, using the same kind of comparison and contrast sheet as in Figure 3.4 forartefacts, make a list of five changes and five things that have stayed the same.From the similarities and differences, one can examine change and continuityin a local area. For example, comparing maps from 1938 and 2001 can revealthat a village now has a bypass, the railway running through it is disused andthe station has closed down. There might be other changes: the duck pond hasbeen filled in and new housing built. Yet the basic layout of the village hasstayed the same, the green is still there as are the manor house and church.This kind of task can be done with children, possibly tied in with geographywork. The lists of similarities and differences can be written up, the worksheetgiving the structure for the piece of writing. The important aspect of pedagogyhere is that the task is finite and focused. Children may not be able to record allthe differences and similarities, but they can find a limited number, and it getsthem looking at the map in depth.

● Questioning: An extension of this activity is for the children to ask questionsabout things on the map they do not understand or know about (e.g. an icehouse, a folly or a tumulus). The advantages of getting children to ask thequestions have been discussed elsewhere in this book.

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● The next activity could be to plan a walk around the local environment visitingplaces of interest or sites of changes. This can be done on a photocopy of themodern map.

● Roman place-names: For this activity you will need photocopies of a road mapof England and the southern part of Scotland. It may be done in pairs, with onephotocopy between each pair. Write on the board the information that ‘ter’ or‘ster’ means ‘fort’ and ask the children to find as many place-names as possibleon their map with this word ending. They can highlight these. The next step isto put the roads in, bearing in mind that Roman roads were straight, radiated outfrom London and linked up all the towns. This can then be compared with pho-tocopies of a map of Roman Britain (easily obtainable from any Roman museumshop). If you do this with children who live near a modern yet ancient Romanroad such as Watling Street, they can begin to understand that their ‘main’ roaddates back to Roman times. The learning outcomes are: for the children to gainsome understanding of the extent of Roman settlement in Britain; to use mapsas a source of evidence for historical enquiry; and to develop some understand-ing of change and continuity in the basis of part of our modern road system.

● Anglo-Saxon place-names: Figure 6.1 lists examples of these.

For this activity you will need A3 size two pages from a road atlas, for exampleone from the Hertfordshire/Cambridgeshire area and one from Cornwall.Ideally make 16 copies of each, enough for one between two, and have themlaminated for long-term use. The overarching question is ‘Where did theAnglo-Saxons settle in Britain?’ The children look at the Hertfordshire mapfirst and in pairs they try to find one piece of a place-name (or letter string) (e.g.

Saxon settlement names

Saxon word Modern word Meaning

Ham Ham VillageInga(s) Ing, in Folk group, people belonging toTun Ton FarmCote Cote, cot CottageBurh Bury Strong place, fortWorth Worth Enclosure, farmFord Ford River crossingLeah Ley, ly Wood, clearingDenu Den ValleyHamstede Hampstead Homestead

Hempstead

Figure 6.1 Anglo-Saxon place-names

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‘denu’). There are so many place-names on this page of the road atlas that itis useful to divide up the pieces of name among the class. Give a time limit of10 minutes, then ask how many the children have found five or more, 10 ormore, 15 or more and so on. Praise the children for their efforts.

The same task may then be carried out for the map of Cornwall looking for thesame letter string for five minutes. This comparison task reveals that there arevery few Anglo-Saxon place-names in Cornwall and you can ask the childrenwhat this tells us about where the Anglo-Saxons settled. The learning outcomesare for the children to gain a good understanding of where the Anglo-Saxonssettled in Britain, and where they did not, and some beginnings of an under-standing of the word ‘settlement’ being related to those pieces of words mean-ing ‘farm’, ‘village’, ‘cottage’ and ‘homestead’. There is also some literacy work atword level in searching for and writing down lists of those same letter strings.

● Viking place-names: A similar activity may be carried out for Viking place-names. Figure 6.2 has a list of words, word parts and meanings. For this com-parison activity one would need a map of somewhere in northern England,where these place-names are common, and one of southern or western England.

● For either the Anglo-Saxon or Viking map activity, a follow-up activity mightbe to give the children an outline map of a locality, with physical featuresmarked on it, and ask them to name these features using Anglo-Saxon orViking words. The next stage is for them to choose a place to put their village,bearing in mind that it needs to be close to a water supply, fairly near woods(for building and fuel) and land for growing crops and running livestock.

● Plans: If your school is in an old building you can sometimes get hold of plansshowing the site in previous years. Children could compare old and new plans

barrow – small hill keld – cold

beck – brook, stream kirk – church

blea – blue knott – rocky hill

crag – rocky cliff pike – mountain peak

dale – valley rigg – ridge

fell – mountain, high grazing saetr – cow pasture, high ground

garth – fenced land, garden scale – hut, shack

gate – path, track tarn – pond

gill – ravine thwaite – clearing

holm – island ton – hedge, fence

how – hill water – lake

ing – meadow, pasture wath – ford

Figure 6.2 Viking place-names

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and come up with reasons for the changes. A set of plans of a grand house canintroduce the children to the types of rooms in such a house and the familyactivities (e.g library, billiard room, ballroom). They can then be told they arethe new landowner of the house and estate and be given the task of turning anold country farmhouse of, say, eight rooms on two levels, into a grand man-sion. This type of activity comes under the heading of planning spaces as ateaching approach (see Chapter 9) and may be adapted for all sorts of histori-cal contexts and situations: an Iron Age fort; a castle; a Roman, Greek, Tudoror Aztec marketplace; a Roman villa, fort or town; an Anglo-Saxon village; aTudor palace; or a Greek temple. Here, the learning comes in the childrenthinking about how the spaces may have been used, and in engaging their his-torical imaginations. The subsequent visit to the Roman villa or grand house isenriched by this preparatory work. Several piles of old stones, which appear tobe all that remains of an abbey dissolved by Henry VIII, take on new signifi-cance if the children can lead the teachers around, telling them these wouldhave been the kitchens and here was the infirmary.

● Another simple, related activity is to give children pictures of a room and askthem to draw room plans. To get children used to this kind of work, they cando it with the classroom first, and then, say, have one picture for each pair ofone of the rooms in Preston Manor and draw a plan of it. The pictures may beused in other ways of course (see Chapter 5), but the general principlehere is of the children taking material in one genre and transforming it intoanother. Houses such as Preston Manor supply information, such as picturesof rooms and plans: all these may be drawn upon in preparation for a visit.

● Another kind of map activity is to get the children to plan journeys andvoyages: Cortez’s journey to Tenochtitlan; Drake’s voyage around the world;the Transports’ voyage to Australia; Boudicca’s rebellion; or the Lancashirehunger marchers’ long walk from Bolton to London. Some information isnecessary; for example, lists of places travelled to, or for voyages, informationon currents and trade winds on a world map. Maps of land will show physicalfeatures which present problems: rivers to cross or ford, mountains andswamps to negotiate.

Visits to sites and museums

What is really important about taking children on visits is that they engage withthe whole business of doing history, whether that is using the skills and processes ofhistorical enquiry, or entering imaginatively into the past. Both of these aspects ofdoing history are fundamental to visits. Above all, children should not be trailinground with clipboards, recording a lot of information, or finding answers to quizzesset by adults. Such activities are particularly hard on those children with literacy

difficulties: struggling with spelling can take the pleasure out of the day and shift thefocus away from historical learning. Often the sites and museums are so rich that wewant our children to experience everything. Our own excitement at seeing wonderfulplaces and marvellous remains in museums can sometimes result in overkill as we tryto ensure children do not miss anything important. As a result we do too many of thewrong activities with them. The list below highlights some bad activities to do withchildren at museums.

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● Tell the children what to notice: ‘Look!’

● Try to look at everything and ‘see nothing’.

● Try to show the children too much.

● Hire the sort of guide who gives a lecture, often in language way above thechildren’s heads.

● Give the children a worksheet and a clipboard.

● A planning spaces activity. Abbeys were complex sites: one way of generatingunderstanding of such sites is to use a mapping activity. Prepare a timetable ofa monk’s day, including activities he might be involved in, such as work ofvarious kinds and prayer (see Figure 6.3 for an example). Read through this

There are several advantages for children in going on visits to sites and museums.It gives children an opportunity to enquire at first hand, with a multi-sensory experi-ence in three dimensions. In fact these visits bring children face-to-face with a realitytotally different from that experienced in their classroom. John Fines (Fines andNichol, 1997) commented on how too often there are glass barriers between childrenand the relics of the past, but there are ways around the barriers. Some museums runobject-handling sessions where children can have the opportunity to handle preciousand rare objects from the past. In some cases, children can experience being a personfrom the past, becoming involved with storytelling, dance, music, drama and role-play. This section of the chapter suggests a number of activities which may be doneat museums, galleries, sites and in the environment. It is best to prepare for thevisit by engaging children intellectually and imaginatively with the site or museum.Examples are given for one site: St Albans Abbey, which is a rich treasure of aresource to visit with children. These examples may be drawn upon for a whole rangeof other sites. In the descriptions of activities which follow, the preparation activityoften leads into the tasks to be done on site.

Activities

timetable with the children and allow them to ask any questions they may have.Give the children some large A3 size blank sheets and, on small pieces of paper,outline map drawings of the various buildings and spaces which go to make upa monastery: the church, the chapter house, the cloisters, the gatehouse, themonks’ dormitories, the refectory, the library, the kitchens, the infirmary, thegardens and so on (see Figure 6.4). The children, working in pairs, are given theinformation that they have been nominated as the new Abbot of a monasteryto be built on a grant of land from King Offa. The task is to move the pieces ofpaper representing the different buildings and spaces around on their blanksheet until they have a sensible plan. For example, have they got the kitchensnear the refectory and gardens for ease of picking fresh vegetables? Wouldthe monks’ dormitories need to be near the church to be handy for getting upto pray in the middle of the night? It is important that children understandsomething of the monks’ lives before attempting to plan the spaces. Once thechildren are satisfied with their plan, they can glue the pieces of paper in posi-tion on the A3 sheet and label the different parts of the building. Geographicalrefinements can be added in. Which way would the church have to be aligned?Should the kitchen gardens be south-facing? This preparation work gets thechildren’s imaginations going on a fantasy monastery, and gives them some-thing with which to compare the reality when they do go on the visit. It alsogives the children some status as experts: instead of the guide telling them thatthis is where the monks would have slept, they can be the ones telling the

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2.00 a.m. Rise for Matins and Lauds (Prayers)

4.30 a.m. In bed

5.00 a.m. Breakfast

6.00 a.m. Prime (Prayers)

7.00 a.m. Reading in cloister and mixtum

8.00 a.m. Tierce (Prayers)

9.00 a.m. Chapter meeting

10.00 a.m. Reading or work

12.30 a.m. Sext and none (Prayers)

2.00 p.m. Dinner

3.00 p.m. Reading or work

5.00 p.m. Vespers (Prayers)

5.45 p.m. Supper

6.00 p.m. Compline (Prayers)

7.00 p.m. In bed

Figure 6.3 A monk’s day

teacher. This kind of approach may be used with villas, ancient settlements,towns, castles, Roman forts, marketplaces and even complex sites such as theTower of London.

● One useful approach is to create a picture trail for the children to follow. Youcan take a number of pictures of key items and places you want the children to see, give them the pictures and ask them to find the real thing or place; for example, the mosaic floor in a Roman bath house, or the kitchen area in a monastery. To return to the St Albans Abbey context, the children

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Abbey church

Great gateway

Almonry

Stables

Water-gate

Long house

Guest’s house

Great courtyard

Well

Refectory

Cloisters

Abbot’s parlour and chapel

Chapter house

Dormitories

Infirmary

Library

Vineyard

Monks’ cemetery

Orchard

Almoner’s gate

Kitchen gardens

Fishpond

Sacristy

Prior’s house

Chamberlain’s house

Abbey meadows

You will need to do a little research into what all these buildings were and their likely shape,

but you may know a great deal already from your own second record (for example, that

cloisters consisted of a kind of covered colonnaded walkway forming the four sides of a

square, with a garden or lawn in the centre).

Figure 6.4 Key to Abbey plan showing types of building

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could be given pictures of key places in the Abbey, such as St Albans tomb and the Watching Chamber, and be encouraged to ask questions about whatfeatures in their pictures. When they visit the Abbey, they can look for thepictured sites and prepare two or three sentences to present to the group in theplenary, which takes the form of a tour around the Abbey conducted by the children. This again places them in role as experts. With a site as rich as this abbey, pairs or groups of children could have different pictures,and in the plenary the knowledge becomes shared with the whole group.This approach may be adapted for all kinds of sites, museums and gallery visits.

● In a gallery (such as one in a grand house), ask the children what they can tellyou about the person who collected the art or objects displayed.

● Divide up the subject (e.g. with a ship, making one group the experts in brass,another in wood, another in iron, another in ropes and so on). This is anotherexample of putting the children in role as experts and gives them status andresponsibility.

● Look at small parts of one site; for example, on a trip to the Tower of London,focus on the Medieval Palace, and stage some storytelling or role-play there(see below).

● Ask the children to look round them, then gather them together and ask whatspoke to them. What object or picture, which room, captured their interest andimagination, and why?

● Following this, ask each pair or small group to go back to this special areaand prepare to introduce it to the rest of the class – putting them in therole of experts on one small part of the site or museum. The children thusbecome guides and show adults around. Follow-up work could be to produce achildren’s trail around the site or museum.

● Ask the children to draw their favourite item or room, so that they really lookat it.

● Use a camera but ration the shots, asking them to record only what is mostimportant: this can lead to debate and discussion.

● There are several books which deal with the organisation and practicalities oftaking children on trips; this is not the main focus here, but it is worthwhilebriefing parents and helpers as to what to expect with regard to learningpurposes and activities, and what they can do to help.

● Ask the children to try to answer key questions about a place (see Figure 6.5).The questions could be divided up between groups of children, so that, say, onegroup focuses entirely on how this place is connected to other places. This

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gives the children a clear focus at a site. These generic questions can generateother questions about aspects such as siting, fitting into the physical land-scape, the number of buildings, their structure and function, and how manypeople lived there. The children have some time to look around and findanswers to the questions through observation and recording, the results ofwhich may be presented as a guidebook entry for a local tourist guide on thehistory of that particular place.

Present Past Influence of the past on the

present

Source: From Copeland (1993)

Figure 6.5 Key questions about a place

What is this place like?

Why is this place as it is;

how and why does it

differ from or resemble

other places?

In what way is this place

connected with other

places?

How is this place

changing, and why?

What would it feel like to

be in this place?

What elements of the past can

we seen in this place?

What influences have these

elements had on this place, and

how does this influence differ

from or resemble what has

happened at other places?

In what ways have past

connections influenced how

this place is now connected

with other places?

How did this place change; and

why and how are those

changes reflected in the

present?

How does the past influence

what it feels like to be in this

place?

What was this place like?

Why was this place as it

was; how and why did it

differ from or resemble

other places?

In what ways was this place

connected with other

places?

How did this place change,

and why?

What would it have felt like

to be in this place?

Storytelling, drama and role-play at historic sites

Many sites and museums have excellent education services and it is quite possibleto buy into these: for example, at St Albans Abbey there are a whole range of trailsand workshops aimed at different Key Stages, including one on the dissolution ofthe monasteries. Such trails involve an element of storytelling and multi-sensory ex-perience. At Preston Manor in Sussex, the children can be given roles of the different

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ntservants and spend the day in role, acting out the tasks which that particular servant

would have had to do. Some teachers prefer to use the knowledge and expertise of sitestaff and, while this is a good idea, it is also good to join in with role-plays to learnmore about how to create and run them.

I will always have two or three stories prepared to tell at historic sites. The dramaticsetting can greatly enhance the atmosphere and help to engage the children’s imagi-nation. In the box below is the skeleton of a story: its essentials. These can be fleshedout by using your own imagination to tell the story. Here is the outline of a storysuitable for telling at a castle, or castle remains:

In the kitchen of a castle, a servant boy, Eric, is helping to prepare for a great feast. Hedoesn’t mind turning the handle of the spit but it is hot work, and he wishes he wasworking with horses, his long-held ambition.

Eric slips away from the kitchen to watch the visitors arrive, a noble lord, Earl Huntley,and his knights from the next manor.

In the stable, watching the squires remove the saddles and rub down the horses, Ericoverhears one of them talking about a surprise attack on his own lord, Sir Geoffrey, andhis men, that very night.

The visiting lord wants this castle and land for himself and intends to take the castle bysurprise when everyone is relaxed at the feast.

Back in the kitchen the cook tells Eric off for wandering and asks him to take wine to hislord and the visitors. Eric tells the cook what he has overheard.The cook decides theyhave to warn Sir Geoffrey and take some action.

Eric goes up to the lord’s chambers and sees the lord is alone for a few moments. Boldly,he asks to speak to him and Sir Geoffrey, since he is in a good mood, listens to him.

The cook prepares two casks of wine: one is the normal one; the other is for the guestsand to which a sleeping potion has been added.

At the feast, Earl Huntley rises to give the signal to his men to attack, and suddenly feelsvery sleepy . . . as do his men.

Sir Geoffrey is amazed, but the cook and Eric show him the weapons concealed beneaththe cloaks of the visitors.They strip the sleeping bodies of the weapons and the servantscarry them outside the castle walls and dump them on the ground, without horses,weapons or armour.

When Huntley and his men awake they slink off back to their manor.They will thinktwice before attempting such a trick again.

Sir Geoffrey offers to reward Eric for his part in foiling the treacherous attack by makinghim a squire to serve a knight and work with the horses.

Against the background of the castle, one could easily imagine such events occurring.To flesh out the story, one might start by setting the scene:

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A useful activity for teachers is to continue and prepare the rest of the story.Chapter 7 contains arguments for the value of storytelling, whether in the classroomor at historic sites; examples of stories and how to use them; and material on how toprepare stories for telling.

● A story about people connected to that site. The obvious story from St AlbansAbbey is that of St Alban himself, but there are others. Instead, use a story suchas that of Athelstan to teach the children about life in medieval times andhow the Church would tax local people to pay for its building and upkeep (seeChapter 1, Cameo 1, and opposite). Through the story, the children gain someunderstanding of the power of the Church in people’s everyday lives and someof the issues of funding such a major complex of buildings and monastic life.Again, if the children re-create the medieval marketplace, they can comparethat experience with that of the modern market.

● A drama activity acting out some of the events which happened at that place.One obvious choice is the dissolution of the monasteries during the reign ofHenry VIII. This can be done after the planning spaces activity. The childrenwill have read the monks’ timetable and gained some understanding of amonk’s life. Give each child a role-card with a different monk’s name, age,role and character on it (see Figure 6.6 for examples). Allow them to ask youquestions about their roles and what they would do. Then tell them they havehad a letter from the King’s commissioners telling them that their abbey is tobe dissolved. The Abbot has to call a meeting of the monks to discuss whatthey should do. Should they write back and protest that they do not live insinful ways and do not deserve this treatment? Should they get ready tobarricade the Abbey and fight the King’s men? Or should they allow thecommissioners to come in and value everything, get ready to move out, andaccept the King’s pension?

Sir Geoffrey de Ward is holding a feast to celebrate his safe return from the Crusades.He has invited his neighbour, Earl Huntley, whom he had fought alongside in the HolyLand. A great feast is being prepared in the castle kitchen.There is a huge stack of freshlybaked loaves on the long tables.There are cauldrons big enough to feed hordes of people.At the chopping block the cook trims pieces of meat and stuffs several geese. Hangingfrom the beams are sacks of wheat, joints of meat and several pheasants. Servants checkthe meat roasting in the great ovens.At the spit where a whole ox is being roasted standsa young servant boy, Eric. He is hot and tired from the steam and heat in the kitchen. Helongs to steal outside and away from the intense damp heat into the cool fresh air. . . .

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Many years ago on a green hillside overlooking an abbey there lived a medieval peasant and

farmer called Athelstan. He had a wife, Alison, several daughters and one son, Nicholas, who

was old enough now to work on the land and help his father with the animals and the crops.

Athelstan liked his plots of land overlooking the great Abbey. It was only a short way into town

next to the Abbey to walk his animals to market. Of an evening he and Alison would often sit

outside their house and look down on the winding stream, the fish pool where the monks

caught their fish, the Abbey gardens and the Abbey itself. Nicholas was not with them in the

evenings for he had met a pretty girl, Mary, the daughter of a farmer over the other side of

the hill, and he was out courting her.

One day, Nicholas came to Athelstan and said that he wanted to be married. Athelstan was

pleased, for it was time Nicholas was off his hands. The girls were growing up and he needed

the space for them. Heaven knew how he was going to get all those girls married off! So he

and Alison gave Nicholas their blessing. But there was a problem. Before he could get

married, the custom was that he had to have a house. Athelstan had some money saved up:

a bag of gold coins he kept hidden in his mattress. He sighed, for it was a lot of work, but said

that if Nicholas helped him with the building, he would build him a house and he could get

married.

All through that long hot summer the building proceeded. Both men got extremely muddy

making wattle and daub for the walls, dusty cutting timber, and splattered with droplets from

the crude plaster. But the house went up. Mary and Alison helped out by doing some of the

work in the fields, and by bringing the men food and drink.At last the walls were done, and from

selling his chickens, sheep and goats in the market, not to mention the delicious butter and

cheese that Alison made, he had just about got enough money to finish the roof. Then the

house would be finished and the young couple could get married.

One evening towards the end of the summer, Nicholas was surprised to see a monk from the

Abbey plodding up the hill towards his house. He and Alison looked at each other worriedly.

What could this be? He had paid his tithe that year, hadn’t he? While his wife went to

fetch ale for the visitor, Athelstan waited, chewing his lower lip in anxiety and anticipation of

trouble. For trouble it certainly was. Brother Mark kept the treasury for the Abbey and

handled all the money. He said: ‘Good evening, my friend, I hope you are well, and your wife and

children also?

Athelstan replied that he was and Alison handed the monk a wooden cup with ale in it. Brother

Mark sipped his ale and then said: ‘You will have noticed that we are rebuilding the west wall of

the Abbey church?’

Athelstan muttered yes, but to tell the truth, he had been so busy and was so tired from his

own building he had not noticed it. He peered down at the Abbey.Yes, there was scaffolding up:

something was happening.

Brother Mark cleared his throat. He said: ‘The matter is that we need extra funds to pay for

this work. It must be done. The old wall was collapsing. We need money to pay for materials

and workmen. We know you are a good faithful Christian and will not hesitate to give

generously.’

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Athelstan, who went to the little church over the other side of the hill every week, couldn’t

argue with that. But if he gave Brother Mark his money, the roof would not be finished and

Nicholas could not move out and get married.

Playing for time, he said: ‘I don’t have that much right now. I have been building for my son. I

can try to get some together, but I will need to go to market first.When do you need the money

and how much?’

Brother Mark replied: ‘I can see that you need a little time. But our need is very urgent. I will

come again next week at the same time and take a tithe [one-tenth] of what you have made.’

When the monk had finished his ale and gone,Athelstan and Alison breathed a sigh of relief. He

took a few coins out of the little bag and set them aside for the Abbey.Then he put the bag with

the rest of the coins, all big gold ones, up the chimney as far as it would go.

The following week when Brother Mark came, the good weather had gone. The evening was

chilly and they were both indoors with the girls asleep on their straw mattresses.Alison lit a fire

in the hearth and they waited nervously for the knock on the door. When it came,

Alison rose to let the visitor in and give him refreshment.

He sipped his ale as before and then said: ‘Now,Athelstan, where is the money for the Abbey?’

Silently Athelstan handed him the few silver coins. ‘Is that it?’ asked Brother Mark in disbelief.

‘It’s been a bad week. When I took my stock to market, I could not get a stall, there were

so many farmers there with all their stuff to sell. I hardly made a thing and had to walk the

animals home again!’

Brother Mark looked at Athelstan as if he did not believe a word. ‘But you must have more than

this!’

Athelstan put his hand in his pocket and pulled out more silver coins. Brother Mark shook his

head and said: ‘You must have more than this – you have one of the finest holdings on the

Abbey’s land!’

Athelstan and Alison quaked with fear. If the monk did not believe them he had the power to

turn them off their land. ‘Mind if I look around?’ said Brother Mark.

‘Not at all,’ replied Athelstan.

Alison spoke for the first time and asked the monk not to disturb the children.

The monk wandered around, looking into pots, peering into the cauldron and inspecting every-

thing.Then he stood gazing at the roaring fire and knew he was defeated.

He said: ‘I will take my tithe and go,Athelstan, but mind you try a bit harder next time!’

When he had slammed the door shut, they breathed a sigh of relief. Shortly after, Nicholas ar-

rived home and they told him what had happened. They worked every hour of daylight that

week to finish the roof. A few weeks later the young couple were married and settled in their

house. But Athelstan said to himself: ‘That was a close one!’

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The monks in a monastery or abbey did lots of different jobs such as bee keeping, wine-making,

brewing, milling, looking after animals, growing fruit and vegetables, harvesting, fishing, build-

ing, carpentry, stonemasonry and copying manuscripts. They also spent much of the day

praying. Some monks had specific duties and they were given special names:

● Abbot – the monk in charge

● Prior – the Abbot’s helper

● Sub-Prior – the Prior’s helper

● Cellarer – the monk in charge of stores and supplies

● Cook – the monk in charge of cooking meals

● Sacrist – the monk in charge of the abbey’s treasures

● Chamberlain – the monk in charge of clothes and bedding

● Guest Master – the monk who looked after abbey guests

● Almoner – the monk who gave food and clothes to the poor

● Infirmarer – the doctor monk

● Librarian – the monk who looked after the books and manuscripts

● Herbalist – the monk who made medicines

● Cantor or Precentor – the monk in charge of singing

● Illuminators – monks who paint pretty pictures in manuscripts

● Choir or cloister monks – ordinary monks

● Novices – boy monks

● Master of the Novices – the teacher monk

● Lay brothers – non-monks who worked at the abbey

● Lay servants – hired help

Example of role-card

Figure 6.6 Monks’ jobs and role-card

Name: John

Age: 51

Role: Librarian

Character: He has spent his whole life in the Abbey since he was a boy and now looks after

the collection of books and manuscripts. He loves the Abbey. It is his home and he does not

want to leave it.

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Above all, do not lecture to children or give them clipboard questionnaires or quizzes!

● Engage the children in activities which involve historical enquiry and all relatedprocesses and skills such as questioning, observation, interpretation, recordingand communication;

● Engage the children in exercising their historical imagination through story-telling, drama and role-play;

● Engage the children in role as decision-makers, planning spaces, making deci-sions (how many Roman soldiers to place on guard at the Roman fort, howmany to do the cooking and other chores);

● Engage the children in role as experts, leading the teachers and helpersaround, sharing their newly acquired knowledge with others to engage with itactively.

This chapter has been an introduction to using maps and plans and to doing his-tory in the environment. It has only skimmed the surface of what is possible, but ithas introduced some valuable ideas. These ideas may be summed up in the followingkey principles, involving historical enquiry, the exercise of the historical imagination,and children in role as decision-makers acting in the historical context:

There are three powerful arguments for storytelling in history. One springs fromthe discipline of history itself, one from cognitive psychology and one from pedagogy.History is the imaginative reconstruction of the past using what evidence we canfind. Historical evidence is often fragmentary or incomplete. Historians use theirimagination in constructing or reconstructing their understanding of past peoples,events and cultures. Much history is concerned with creating narratives of past eventsfrom evidence. There is inevitably selection and ordering of events to make a coherentwhole and an interpretation of events. Narrative is a fundamental part of history, mostapparent in the final products of historical processes, the written accounts of pastperiods, events and people. However, there is more than this to narrative withinhistory. There is a wealth of theory on narrative, far too much to detail here (for a briefsummary, see Rosen, 1988). One of the central tenets of this book is that history is anumbrella discipline (Cooper, 1992, 1995a, 1995b, 2000). Stories, like songs, dance andmusic, are part of every culture, past and present. Anthropologists understand theimportance of stories in a culture; as part of their discipline, they have to know thestories of a culture, who tells them, when and how (Rosen, 1988).

Bruner set out to show that history is one of two possibilities in the way that we orderexperience. These two modes are the ‘narrative’ mode, and the ‘paradigmatic’ or ‘logico-scientific’mode. He stated that the paradigmatic mode works through ‘categorisation orconceptualisation and the operations by which categories are established, instantiated,idealised and related to one another to form a system’ (Bruner, 1986, p. 12). His view ofthe narrative mode was that it worked by constructing two landscapes simultaneously:

the landscape of action, where the constituents are the arguments of action: agent, intentionor goal and situation, instrument, something corresponding to a ‘story grammar’ . . . and thelandscape of consciousness; what those involved in the action know, think and feel, or donot know, think and feel.

(Bruner, 1986, p. 14)

The beauty of history is that it is simultaneously concerned with both modes ofthought. In historical enquiry, by asking questions, investigating evidence, ordering

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CHAPTER 7

Storytelling‘Putting the book down’

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m information from evidence and reaching a conclusion or new hypotheses we areemploying the logico-scientific mode of thought. In interpreting evidence, we areusing ‘the second record’ (Hexter, 1972) of all our experience to date, which is bothlogico-scientific and narrative in nature. For example, we may have a series of linkedideas on the Second World War, with concepts such as evacuation, rationing, the Blitz,the Battle of Britain, the blackout and doodlebugs helping us to order our under-standing of what the war meant to people at home. In addition, we will have heardstories perhaps from older family members, eyewitness accounts, read books,watched films and documentaries which have become part of our second record andhelp us to interpret evidence (a ration book, a picture of bombed buildings or a letterfrom an evacuee). Finally in presenting history, we often use the narrative mode‘to tell the story’ of past events whether orally through storytelling and drama, or inwritten form as history books.

The third argument for using storytelling in history comes from pedagogy andfrom pedagogical content knowledge (Turner-Bisset, 1999a, 2001). Storytelling is avery ancient and potent form of teaching, an approach known and recognised byreligious leaders. Stories seem to be fundamental to human nature. We all enjoystories, whether in the form of written narratives such as novels, or television pro-grammes, films and plays. There seems to be a human need or desire to know ‘whathappens next’, a need exploited to the full by the makers of soap operas, and in earliertimes by writers such as Dickens and Hardy, in writing novels in serial form. Narratedstories have a particular magic which is hard to unpack. Magic is not too strong aword in this context. I have seen audiences literally ‘spellbound’ after a telling. Bothteller and listeners are caught up in an imaginative re-creation of past events andpeople, which functions simultaneously as a shared, collective group experience, andas multiple individual experiences as each listener interprets the story according tohis or her second record.

To read a story off the printed page and to tell the same story orally are two totallydifferent experiences, both for teller and listener. To understand why, we need toexplore the differences between the two. In reading a story, the teacher’s attention isfocused on the words in front of her or him. Although teachers can and do employexpression to good purpose in story reading, there is a tangible difference when thestory is told. In telling, one’s eyes are on the audience. Making eye contact is one ofthe most valuable aspects of storytelling, for one can draw in the listener, and the veryact of eye contact builds a bridge between teller and listener. ‘Eyes convey meaningpowerfully; we communicate emotions in this way’ (Turner-Bisset, 2000b, p. 176).Putting the book down makes this eye contact possible. It also makes other thingspossible, such as gesture, movement and inviting the listeners into the story. Theseaspects of storytelling exploit the all-important non-verbal channels of communica-tion which are such an important part of good teaching (Turner-Bisset, 2001). With nobook to hold, one can mime actions in a story; for example, hiding a bag of gold up achimney, calming a horse in the blacksmith’s, or polishing a silver spoon. One can, in

the words of John Fines, ‘take the story for a walk’ if it involves travel from one placeto another, or the usage of different settings, by moving around the classroom and‘creating’ those places in the minds of your listeners. Finally you can ‘invite’ yourlisteners into the story by moving towards them and addressing them as if they werecharacters in a story. They do not have to make any response, but the mere act of thisinvitation serves to draw them in and heighten the imaginative processes. This ispartly to do with one of the ‘bottom-tray tools’ of non-verbal communication, the‘teacher’s toolbox’ (Tauber and Mester, 1995), which is surprise. A storytelling and allit involves holds the constant possibility of surprise which a skilful teacher and/orstoryteller can exploit to the hilt. Storytelling gives the teacher the opportunity to usethe non-verbal channels of communication very effectively.

From the point of view of pedagogy, this is powerful stuff. Alexander (1995) remindedus that ‘it is essentially in the discourse between teacher and pupil that education isdone, or fails to be done’ (Edwards and Mercer, 1987, quoted in Alexander, 1995, p. 159).Storytelling is a particularly potent, intense form of discourse. Some people might thinkthat for pupils it is a passive activity, just sitting still and listening. I would argue thatdespite surface appearances, it is on the contrary a particularly active form of engage-ment with the teacher, in terms of what is happening in the minds of pupils. Myhypothesis is that storytelling functions simultaneously as enactive representation, inthe dramatic lived experience of the story, as iconic representation, in the creation ofpictures in the minds of teller and listener, and as symbolic representation, through thesymbol system of spoken language.

As regards pedagogy, it is extraordinarily efficient and effective. A storytelling mayoccupy 5, 10 or 15 minutes (perhaps longer in the hands of very gifted or experiencedstorytellers such as John Fines or Betty Rosen), but a great deal of learning can beachieved during such a telling. To learn about how people lived in Tudor times, a classmight research from the internet or a range of topic books on different aspects of lifein that period, but an oral telling of Elizabeth I and the Tides letter can furnish similarinformation far more economically and lastingly. The ordering of experience throughthe sequencing of events in a spoken narrative seems to have a much more lastingimpact on the human mind than does a collection of facts and concepts, or even anorganised web of linked ideas. Teachers might set a comprehension test based on apassage read from a historical topic book: the likelihood is that a week or even a daylater, much of what has been written about has vanished from children’s minds andmade no impact on one’s memory, or schema or second record. The same informationfrom such a text, conveyed by means of a told story, would appear, on the contrary, toremain in memory and become accommodated into schema in terms of children’slearning, or part of the second record in terms of doing history. Some proof of this isgiven in the example story and children’s work which this story generated. Narrative,as a fundamental means of ordering experience, seems to act as a catalyst to learning.

Yet there is more. Stories are an excellent way of communicating facts, concepts,ideas, technical language, values and attitudes to children. For example, through the

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telling of the story of Boudicca’s rebellion, one can teach such concepts as rebellion,invasion, loan, tribe and humiliation. The explanation and visual representations ofideas conveyed by the story serve to underline meaning through the repetition of key-words and concepts. The story seems to make meaning transparent. Quite difficultabstract ideas can be taught through storytelling (and history is packed with abstractideas and concepts, such as kingship, democracy, loyalty, authority, community,power, duty and slavery, as well as concepts peculiar to history which often serve asshorthand ways of communicating complex systems, events or cycles of change, suchas the feudal system, the Black Death or the Renaissance). I have written elsewhereof telling a story about ‘The King’s Feather’ to a group of 5- and 6-year-olds who wereable to understand ‘falconer’ and ‘falconry’ after one telling, despite the conceptsbeing new to them (Turner-Bisset, 2000b). Children who have never seen an Egyptianroyal seal or a sarcophagus may none the less have a very accurate concept of thesethings from a telling of Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.Furthermore, the rich example of this particular tomb serves to communicate boththe concept of the ‘afterlife’ and the central importance it held in the religious beliefsof Ancient Egyptians.

Mention of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun brings me to an additionaladvantage to storytelling: it is an excellent means of communicating or inspiring aweand wonder in children. There are in circulation at the time of writing some trainingmaterials on teaching for those involved in Ofsted inspections. One such video fea-tures a brave young student-teacher attempting to teach a class about Tutankhamunthrough a selection of passages from a written version of the story stuck on the board.The children’s task is to put the passages into the correct order. Now while theremight be a place for this kind of sequencing activity in both English and history, it islikely that, shortly after the lesson, much will have been forgotten about the topic.How much more potent to tell the story and arrive at that moment when HowardCarter, after his long years of lack of success in finding a royal tomb, peers through thejust-opened threshold and sees, by the light of a flickering match, ‘everywhere theglint of gold!’ Through the telling of the story of the discovery, children can enterimaginatively into what it felt like to be Howard Carter at that moment. They canalso experience awe at the collection of ‘wonderful things’ and wonder at this greattreasure sealed away underground for the benefit of the long-departed pharaoh. Ihave as yet no store of research evidence, but it is my hypothesis that the engagementof emotions during storytelling makes possible children’s learning of difficult ideas,and the understanding of words, ideas and concepts in history. As a means of teach-ing about historical situations or sense of period, it is one of the most important toolsin the history teacher’s pedagogical repertoire.

These then are the three arguments supporting the use of storytelling in history: thenature of the subject discipline; the understandings from cognitive psychology, andthe insights from pedagogy and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986a,1986b, 1987). In the following section, I give an example of a story which I have used

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many times with teachers, student-teachers and children. It is a story of particularpower and appeal, parts of which will be analysed in this chapter. It also lends itself toa range of follow-up activities, not just in history but across the curriculum.

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THE STORY OF THE TRANSPORTS

The story I am about to tell to you is completely true in every detail, apart from onelittle thing. Everything in this story really happened. It began many years ago in thecounty of Norfolk, where a young man named Henry Cabell was working in the fields ona bitterly cold day. His hands were red and raw from hoeing along the rows of turnips, forthis story happened before the days of farm machinery and many jobs had to be done byhand. It was very hard work, yet cold in the biting east wind.The wind whistled throughhis trousers and made him shiver despite his physical labour. Before long he saw his dad,Henry Senior, coming towards him with another man from the village, a bit of a badcharacter called Abe Carman. His dad greeted him and they chatted, Henry resting hisarms on his hoe handle. His father did most of the talking. He said: ‘You know that bighouse on the hill? Well,Abe’s got a little job for us both.The grand folks are away inLondon and it’s empty: not a soul there.We can get in tonight and get some food andstuff.What do you say?’

Henry said, ‘But that’s stealing! I can’t do that!’

His dad said, ‘Look at you, Henry, in your thin clothes and battered boots! When did youlast feel warm? When did you last have a good meal?’ For their wages as farm labourerswere very low, and they often went hungry and ill-clothed.

‘I know,’ said Henry unhappily, ‘but I don’t really want to do this.’

Abe spoke up then. He said, ‘The owners are away and we can go when the watch is atthe other end of the village.We need you.There’s a little window you can get in. Comeon! This will be easy. It’s only the once!’ For Henry Senior had ‘helped’Abe before on his‘little jobs’, but they all knew this would be Henry’s first time.

Late that night under cover of darkness, they moved silently towards the house.All wasin shadow, and the little scullery window, as predicted by Abe, was unfastened.WiryHenry slid himself in and unlocked the door.They crept through the house, filling theirsacks with food and with materials to make into warm clothing or to sell. They were sohungry they took the pickled meat from the casks in the cellar, and so cold that theytook the bed hangings off the four-poster beds.They left the house as quietly as theyhad come, but then disaster struck! The watch was early, and they were arrested andtaken before the judge to be sentenced for robbery and housebreaking.

The judge was fed up. Every day there were more and more criminals for him to dealwith, low common people who stole property from the likes of him.The prisons were fullto overflowing and yet still they appeared before him every day.The judge believed insetting an example. In ringing tones, he announced that the three were to be taken fromthis court into a place of public execution and hanged by the neck until they were dead.Someone spoke up on behalf of the boy, for he was only 19 and it was his first offence.

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The judge sighed and agreed to be lenient in this case.Abe Carman and Henry Seniorwere hanged, and Henry was taken away to Norwich Gaol to await transportation to thecolonies for 14 years.

Meanwhile, one afternoon in another part of Norfolk, a young maidservant,also aged 19, Susannah Holmes, was cleaning the family silver. She yawned as shepolished, for she had been up since 6 a.m., cleaning the fireplaces, lighting the fires,carrying up hot water for washing, cooking breakfast, and cleaning the rooms.Theafternoon was her ‘easy’ time, but she always had jobs to do.This was all she had knownsince she was 12 years old. She gazed at the spoon she held and thought that if shewere to sell it, she would not have to work for a whole year! She could not help herselfand slipped the spoon into her apron pocket. Just then her mistress came in and caughther in the act.

‘Susannah! What are you doing?’

‘Nothing, miss! I mean, just cleaning the spoons!’ she stuttered.

Her mistress seized her apron and felt the hard outline of the spoon.

‘You disgraceful girl! After all my kindness to you! You ungrateful child!’

Susannah’s mistress called the watch. Susannah was taken away and the judge sentencedher to 14 years’ transportation to the colonies on account of her extreme youth.

So Susannah was taken to Norwich Gaol, a great big dungeon of a place beneath thecastle.There in one big cell, amidst the filth and squalor, the rats and mice andcockroaches, she and Henry met and fell in love. Just over a year later, Susannah gavebirth to a baby, a fine strong boy whom they named Henry.And still they waited fornews of transportation since Henry was first sentenced three years before.

Why was it taking so long? The answer was: there was nowhere to send them! Prior tothis time, the government had sent criminals to the American colonies as convicts towork. But since the Americans had won the War of Independence, they had refused toaccept the dregs of this country – and who can blame them! It was years before it wasdecided to send the convicts to this vast new country which had been discovered on theother side of the world:Australia.

Prisoners were sent for from all over England, from Devon and Derby,Wiltshire andWales, from Newark and Frome.And so it was that one day, John Simpson, a kindly seniorturnkey (for that was what we called prison officers then), came to Norwich Gaol with alist of prisoners for transportation to Australia as part of the First Fleet. He called out thenames of the prisoners. Susannah was on the list, but not her baby of course (for whoknew of him?) or Henry Cabell. Susannah sobbed her heart out. She was devastated atthe thought of leaving them both behind. John Simpson took pity on her for he was akind man, and suggested that she bring the baby; they might let it on board, but Henrywould have to wait. He would see what he could do to allow them to travel together.

John Simpson, the other turnkey and the women prisoners set off on their long and arduousjourney across England by stage-coach from Norwich to Plymouth docks.As it nearednightfall each day, they stopped at an inn. John asked the first innkeeper: ‘Do you have aroom for the night for myself, and perhaps a barn or stable for the women prisoners?’

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And the innkeeper would say: ‘Yes I have a fine room for you with a good fire and goodfood and ale.There is a barn round the back of the inn where the women can sleep.’

The next day they travelled onwards and in the evening John asked the second innkeeper:‘Do you have a room for the night for myself, and perhaps a barn or stable for thewomen prisoners?’

And the innkeeper would say: ‘Yes I have a fine room for you with a good fire and goodfood and ale.There is a barn round the back of the inn where the women can sleep.’

The next day they travelled onwards and towards dark, John asked the third innkeeper:‘Do you have a room for the night for myself, and perhaps a barn or stable for thewomen prisoners?’

And the innkeeper would say: ‘Yes I have a fine room for you with a good fire and goodfood and ale.There is a barn round the back of the inn where the women can sleep.’

And so it went on until they reached Plymouth docks.They alighted from the stage-coachand headed up the gangplank The captain of their ship, a nasty piece of work, was shoutingat the prisoners as they came on board. He stopped Susannah and said: ‘You can’t bring ababy on this ship. My papers say nothing about a baby! Get rid of it! Throw it overboard: it’llnever survive the voyage anyway! More than my job’s worth to carry a baby!’

Susannah broke into more weeping, and as she sobbed, kindly John Simpson came to therescue again. ‘Susannah, you have to get on board now! But give me the baby and I willride to London and try to get permission for the three of you to travel together!’

Still weeping, Susannah kissed her baby and handed him to John, wondering if she wouldever see her little boy again. John got the fastest horse he could and rode back toLondon, somehow managing to get the baby fed on the way.As he neared London hefound the same inn again and asked the innkeeper if he knew of a good woman who hadrecently lost her own child who could look after the baby for a few days.The innkeeperdid know of such a woman and John handed over the baby. He then rode on to the HomeSecretary’s grand house in central London, the home of Lord Sydney himself. He knockedon the door and the maid answered.

‘Have you got an appointment? Lord Sydney is very busy.’

‘ No,’ panted John. ‘But please let me in! This is a matter of great urgency!’

He pushed past her into the hall.There a male secretary was writing at a desk. He turned toJohn in surprise, wondering what this strange travel-stained man was doing in the house.He was about to order him to leave when Lord Sydney, with his hat and silver-tipped cane,came down the grand staircase on his way to the club to dine. John turned to him and said:‘Please, my lord, I have to talk to you urgently about a case of great sorrow! Please listen tome!’And he told his tale of Henry and Susannah.

To his credit, Lord Sydney listened to every word. He mused aloud on the strength theyoung couple had shown so far, and how useful such a couple would be in the colonies, inthe new empire that Britain was building across the world. He ordered his secretary tomake three copies of papers authorising John to collect Henry from Norwich Gaol, andfor the three to travel together to Australia. He ordered the maid to ask the head groom

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Using this story in teaching

This is a tremendous story, full of possibilities for history and across the curriculum.The fact that it started in 1783 and hence does not obviously fit into an area of study atKey Stage 2 should not discourage anyone from using the story. Throughout the earlypart of the Victorian period, convicts were being transported to Australia for much thesame kinds of crime as those committed by Henry and Susannah. Their case can serveas a particular instance of widespread events which are historical facts. The themesarising from this story are those of law and order, crime and punishment, how societiestreat those who do not abide by their rules, and migration, enforced or otherwise,to far-distant countries. This, as well as being exciting history, is the very stuff ofcitizenship. The story can stimulate wide-ranging discussion in the immediate contexton rules in the classroom or school and in the national context in considering how oursociety deals with those who break the rules. There is room for moral reflection too onwhether it was right for Henry and Susannah to steal the things they did, and whatdrove them to steal. Finally, with its undertones of the Christmas story, of the convictshaving only barns and stables to sleep in, and Susannah making that difficult journey

to prepare his fastest horse. He signed and sealed the documents and gave them to John,saying: ‘Ride, man, as if your life depended on it! The First Fleet sails at the end of nextweek.You have just enough time to collect Henry and the baby and ride to Plymouth.Good luck, man!’

With that, he was off to his club, swinging his cane. John climbed on to the horse and itgalloped swiftly as the wind.The governor of Norwich Gaol was surprised, but, on readingthe document, let Henry go.The horse coped well with the two of them, but once back inLondon, John found another fast horse while Henry was reunited with his son.Then withJohn on one horse and Henry and the baby on the other, they rode hard for several daysuntil they reached Plymouth docks.The captain could not believe his eyes when he sawthe official letter, but he let Henry and the baby on board. Great was the rejoicing whenthe three of them were together again. Susannah cried for joy this time.

There is more to the story: the nine long months of difficult voyage to Botany Bay; thelanding at this bleak and barren place; the legend of Henry carrying the Captain of theFirst Fleet, Captain Arthur Phillips, ashore, thus making himself the first white convictsettler to set foot in Australia (this is the only bit that might not be true); the sailing onto Sydney Cove; the founding of the convict settlement; the four long hard years on halfrations; Henry and Susannah’s eventual freedom and respectability; his developingbusiness interests of hotels and stage-coaches; their ten further children; their deaths intheir eighties only a few months apart, to their eventual burial in the family vault. In1968 on the 180th anniversary of the landing of the First Fleet, the first reunion was heldin Australia which celebrated convict ancestry, with over 100 descendants of the Kabells(for that was how they spelled their name now) coming together in celebration.

Source:Adapted from Bellamy (1977)

with the baby, the story has enormous appeal. It taps into some of our deepest emo-tional feelings about love between adults, parental love and potential loss of both. Whocannot empathise with the plight of Henry and Susannah, thinking they will lose eachother and their child? The story also generates astonishment at the severity of the legaljustice system in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as discussion as towhy punishments were so harsh. What follows is a selection of activities which havebeen trialled on children, with examples of children’s work, and an example sessionplan for the initial stimulus session.

A Year 6 class in a middle-class suburb

This class had been doing the Victorians, using mainly topic books and the internet toresearch information. They were highly motivated and enthusiastic, and well used toclass discussion which their teacher handled with consummate skill. As soon as I sawthis class on a school visit I was desperate to work with them. They were of mixedability, with most at Level 4 in literacy and numeracy, but with a handful of very ablepupils at Level 5 and above, as well as about eight pupils working either at or towardsLevel 3. I had two consecutive Friday mornings to work with them.

I started by telling them the story up to the point where John Simpson goes to LordSydney’s house to ask for help. I stopped and told them they would find out how thestory ended later that morning, but for now I wanted them to discuss in pairs orthrees for one minute how they thought Lord Sydney would react to John’s tale. Asis usual, they came up with a variety of responses: that he would send John awaywithout listening to the whole story; that he would listen kindly and allow all three,Henry, Susannah and the baby, to travel together; that he would send the convicts offtogether but adopt the baby who would grow up to be someone famous; that the goodwoman would keep the baby; and so forth. The children fed back their ideas to thewhole class orally.

Next I explained that we were going to act out the story. There was much enthusi-asm and many hands went up to try to claim leading roles. I told them everyonewould have a part, that some involved many lines, some only a few lines, and some nolines at all. They could volunteer for what they wanted. I did not know the class, thisbeing my first encounter with them. Thus the key roles went to a range of children,not just the most able. I had a number of small laminated role-cards ready to give out,one to each child. I revised the different scenes. I asked them to work in pairs at theirtables for ten minutes to write down in draft some lines of dialogue they thoughtthey might use as their characters. This was very interesting. For example, if one ofthe less able children had difficulty thinking of lines for themselves, and there weremore able children at the same table who had roles as convicts without any speech,I found that after a few minutes, these children were working together to createdialogue: genuine co-operative group work. This preparation time was essential to thesuccess of the drama.

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We had the luxury of an empty classroom next door. I seated the children in acircle on the carpet. I explained where the different scenes would be: Norwich Gaol;London with the first inn and Lord Sydney’s house; Salisbury with the second inn;Exeter with the third inn; and Plymouth docks where the First Fleet was waiting atanchor. All other scenes would be played out in the central area and children notinvolved in a scene would wait on the carpet until the right moment. I asked thechildren to move into position, the three innkeepers at their posts around the room,the captain at the docks, and the convicts (those children without speaking parts) in‘Norwich Gaol’. The teacher had a convict role-card so he settled down in the ‘Gaol’with the children.

I explained further that this was not polished drama for the Christmas play, butdrama for learning. We would act it out without stopping. If someone forgot their linesor what to do next, we could all help out. I would act as narrator if necessary. I gave a sig-nal and we began. The children threw themselves into their roles and it went smoothly:some children consulting their jotters for their lines; others acting more confidentlywithout their books. I came in as Lord Sydney (for only I knew the ending to the story)and acted his musing aloud, and then decided, for the sake of empire-building, that thethree should travel together. The children cheered when they heard what ‘Lord Sydney’had to say. It was very moving. The silence of the children at the end was testimony tothe impact the story and drama had had on them. Then one girl broke the silence andturned to me: ‘That was wonderful, Miss,’ she said, ‘Can we do it again?’

After this we returned to the children’s classroom next door and I set the task ofwriting the story of the transports in their own words. This was to be completed forhomework. I offered a written version of the story from my sources, and a page ofextracts from a newspaper in the Norwich City Library Archives, on which the storywas based. A few children asked if they could use the sources to help them, but mostwere immediately engaged in the writing task. An example of their stories is given inFigure 7.1. Betty Rosen has written extensively on the value of getting children torewrite told stories, and readers are directed to her excellent books (Rosen, 1988,1993). In writing a narrated story, children re-engage imaginatively with the story andadd significant detail of their own, which shows both their understanding and inter-pretation of the story. It gives material for assessment of historical understanding.From the point of view of literacy, rewriting a narrated story releases children fromhaving to deal simultaneously with the compositional and the secretarial aspects ofwriting. The story is already there in their minds and they can concentrate on gettingit down on paper. The quality of the writing produced by these children was superb.A subsidiary purpose to the teaching had been to generate high-quality pieces ofextended writing in Key Stage 2, an area of concern in literacy teaching identified byOfsted (2000). I collected the stories into a book to share with the class.

Below is a list of all the follow-up work I did in those two mornings. Some itemswhich involve music or documents are dealt with in more depth in other chapters(e.g. Chapters 4 and 10).

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The Story of Henry and Susannah

This is a true story about two people called Henry and Susannah who fell in love.

Henry was a nineteen-year-old young man. He was very poor and worked all day as a farmer.

One day as he was working his father and a man asked him if he wanted more food and clothes.

Of course Henry said yes but he wasn’t too sure when his father said they had to steal. His

father somehow persuaded him that it will be worth it when they had luxurious food and

clothes.

When Henry and his father and the man crept into the old dark building, they stole as many

things that their hands could carry. Hangings from the four-poster bed. Pickled meat and lots of

silk. They did not notice that there was a watchman watching them. . . . They were sent to the

judge because of stealing and the judge said Henrys father and the man should be hanged, but

Henry should be sent to a jail for 14 years.

Susannah was a nineteen-year-old maid. She had been working as a maid from the age of 14 and

everyday she would cook dinner, clean cups and, mugs and spoons and knives and lots more

cutlery. One day as she was polishing a spoon she thought of how much money she would make

if she sold it. She decided to steal it and just as she was putting it in her pocket her mistress

walked in Her Mistress was so ashamed of her because she trusted her. Susannah was sent to the

judge and she too was sent to a jail for 14 years.

For the first few years, Henry and Susannah knew that they were both in love.They secretly got

married and had a baby called Henry junior!

However, one day John Simpson came to the jail with a list of names. The names of those

people were allowed to go Plymouth docks where they could go home. Susannah was on the

list but Henry and the baby were not. Susannah begged to John Simpson that he could let her

husband and baby come, but John said only the people on the list can come but the baby can

come but I will try and get you all together.

It took Susannah and the baby many days to reach Plymouth docks and when they finally had

there the chief of the boat refused to let the baby come on board. Susannah sobbed but Johns

Simpson reassured her that he would look after her baby. Susannah finally got on the boat and

John Simpson went back on his horse carrying the baby in one hand and the reigns in the other.

John Simpson went to London and hired a woman to look after the baby.Then, he went to Lord

Sydney’s office. Lord Sydney was a rich man and John thought that maybe if the judge listened

to lord Sydney about the problem about Henry and Susannah then maybe the judge will let

Henry free.

Anyway, John asked the secretary if he could speak to lord Sydney but he was going to a party

and refused to listen. Simpson begged and finally lord Sydney gave in. Simpson told Lord Sydney

everything, and right away Lord Sydney made his secretary write a letter to the judge saying

Henry should be free. . . . The judge let Henry go.

Henry, Susannah, and Henry junior were all finally together and they were all so strong that they

lived all through what had happened.They had 10 more children and Henry and his family were

not poor anymore because Henry had a very highly paid job and when he died at the age of 82

Henry junior took his place!

The End

Figure 7.1 Children’s work:The Story of Henry and Susannah

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m Follow-up work to the transports

● Playing dance and song tunes on melodeon and concertina, both Victorianinventions, treating them both as artefacts and as a means of experiencing andenjoying some of the music which the convicts took with them fromEngland to Australia.

● Discussion on crime and punishment in Victorian times and in the present.Generating a list of crimes today and likely punishments: links to citizenship.

● Examining and interrogating gaol records for the local area for 1842 and 1857.Here I simply gave the children facsimiles of the original records with typedcopies on the reverse and the children asked me questions about them (‘Wasneglecting your wife a crime in those days, Miss?’ . . . It was and still is!). We wereable to determine that in this area at least, punishments became more harsh be-tween 1842 and 1857 by comparing crimes and punishments from both years.

● Examining individual prison records and creating such records for Henry andSusannah, with date and time arrested, crime, possessions and clothing.

● Singing and studying ballads of transportation such as ‘Australia’ (see Chapter10). These were used as a means of corroborating evidence for the story ofHenry and Susannah and as a model for writing in ballad form. After drawingtheir attention to the kinds of simple forms of four-line stanzas and second- andfourth-line rhyming, I set the task of writing the same story in ballad form. Thiswas completed as homework, and the resulting ballads of Henry and Susannahwere collected into a book as before. An example of their ballads is given inFigure 7.2.

● Using the picture The Last of England (Ford Madox Brown, 1855) as a focus fordiscussion on the voyage and its difficulties. This was an unplanned piece ofteaching. A very able girl was typing up her story which ran to several pages,and her mother asked her what it was about. On hearing the story, the motherproduced a colour copy of the picture to take in. We examined the evidence inthe picture including items such as the cabbages hanging in nets around theside of the ship as a precaution against scurvy. The picture generated furtherinterest and discussion, and was used on the front cover of the book of balladswritten by the class.

● I gave the children internet references for the First Fleet, on which they couldlook up the names of those who sailed and the ships they sailed in. One of thesites lists Susannah but not Henry. I asked the children why this might be thecase and they replied that Henry was not officially in that sailing. Thereis a wealth of information and evidence on the internet about the First Fleet(see e.g. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fleet http://www.pcug.org.au/~pdownes/dps/1stflt.htm . . . www.angelfire.com/country/AustralianHistory/firstfleet.htm).

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Figure 7.2 Children’s work: Henry and Susannah

How to tell stories in the primary classroom

This section includes information on: how to go about telling stories to primary-agedchildren; how to prepare stories for telling; ideas for activities after the telling; andadapting ideas for different age ranges.

For the telling of stories it is good to have the children grouped around you, facingyou, and able to make eye contact with you. As we have seen, eye contact is anextremely important ingredient in storytelling. With younger children it is a simplematter to have them gathered on the carpet for storytelling. Older, larger childrencan present more problems. The choices are to have them at their desks, in whichcase you need to demand that they turn their chairs and face you, the teller, nottheir friends across the table. I often get children to move furniture and create acircle: this works very well. One can seat older, bigger children on the carpet, but thesnag is that there is often not enough room. Furthermore the teller can be hemmed inby a sea of arms and legs, and be unable to move. Movement is not always essentialto a good telling, but it can be an important ingredient. Gesture is vital and you needat least the space to do that without poking a child in the eye. It goes without sayingthat you need to ensure you have everyone’s attention before starting. However, onceyou have begun the story, it is likely that you will hold their undivided attention. Evena difficult class can become spellbound and, if there are fidgets, eye contact comes inuseful as a means of holding order and attention: a look is enough to stop unwantedactivity.

With this particular story I mime: Henry hoeing in the fields in the bitter cold atthe beginning; the burglary; Susannah polishing the silver and putting the spoon inher pocket; the judge taking his seat on the bench to pronounce sentence; Susannahholding her new baby; John Simpson reading from a list of female convicts; thejourney, by going to three different children in different parts of the room and askingthem for a room as if they were the innkeepers; the captain of the ship with his whip;John’s desperate ride with the baby, and so on. I use movement and gesture liberallyto help create the pictures in my listeners’ minds. Storytelling in this way blends intodrama and is truly an enactive representation of an historical situation.

Learning stories to tell is not a matter of learning them by heart. It does not worklike that. The best explanation I have found is from Betty Rosen, who suggests thatwhen we tell stories, it is like running a film in our heads. As tellers, we visualise thepeople and events of the story; as listeners, the audience do the same. The sequenceof images unfolds like a film, a visual representation of the words of the story. Part ofthe magic lies in this re-creation of people and events. Thus in preparing for story-telling, one needs to have a sequence of events enriched by significant detail. I learnedhow to prepare stories for telling from Rosen’s (1988) And None of it was Nonsense

(Chapter 5, ‘Selecting and preparing material for story telling’). She states a ‘basicfoursome’ for preparation (see below). This is of course related to telling any kind ofstory, not just an historical one, but the foursome may be adapted for history.

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gStory preparation

1 Find a story you like massively: a story your imagination will relish, cherishand nourish.

2 Get all the facts and details together, even those you will later reject: there is alot of lesson preparation involved, although, with luck, your pupils will neverguess!

3 Decide what you are going to include, note it down in sequence and, in theprocess, consider particularly carefully how you are going to begin.

4 Visualise the start precisely; by this I mean allow the opening to occupy – takeover – your imagination. This will go a long way towards ensuring that youwill speak with your own voice a story that has become your own.

(Rosen, 1988, p. 54)

There is much that is useful here. Certainly when you start telling historical stories ithelps to choose ones you like a great deal. It helps you to make them your own andassists the process of selecting events and details, and sequencing them for a telling.‘The Transports’ was only the third story I ever told, and it helped that I had encoun-tered the story as the basis for a folk opera while living in East Anglia in the 1970s.The first story was ‘Demeter and Persephone’, partly because it is a Greek myth likelyto be used during a history study unit on the Ancient Greeks, and partly because Ihave always loved the story. The second was a self-devised story about a medievalpeasant and the Abbey tax collector, told as part of fieldwork around St Albans Abbey(see Chapter 6, Figure 6.6). In all these cases I went through the process described byRosen of selecting and rejecting material and sequencing it for a telling. I then selectabout eight points or scenes in the story and attach to them significant detail. Thereis an example of the skeleton of a story in Chapter 6 (p. 79).

Finally I work on the opening scene, and again there is an example of this inChapter 6. When I first began telling stories I wrote them out in longhand, to have asan aide-mémoire when telling, but I soon realised that once launched into the story Idid not need to consult the written versions. Now I find it enough to have the list ofpoints and significant detail to hand, and to read it through before telling. Beginningsare so important that they need to be practised aloud. After several tellings, the talebecomes your own, and it is rare for you to need to keep referring to notes prior totelling the story. It will be different each time you tell it and that is no bad thing, forit means that the story is a living, organic entity, re-created each time it is told.

This sounds like a great deal of work, and in a sense it is. However, it is very valuablepreparation for several reasons. In the process of selecting material for a story, you canread several different versions of historical events. This enhances your backgroundknowledge of the period and gives you an understanding of the different interpreta-tions of events. It also enables you to develop your own interpretation, your own

telling of the story and your own historical understanding. From the point of view ofdeveloping in-depth subject knowledge, the process is invaluable. The next group ofreasons are to do with the realities of preparation in the busy work of being a teacher.It is worth indulging in this kind of detailed preparation for storytelling as a kind of‘capital investment’ for future teaching. Once prepared and told, a story stays with youand may be used over and over again on different groups of children. Thus what seemslike a huge amount of work in the short term is in fact preparation for a lifetime’s workof teaching. One need not have a story for every period of history told: in fact it is goodpractice to use the whole range of teaching approaches. However, a good story as partof a medium-term plan can serve as the inspiration and stimulus to good historicallearning and teaching as well as learning in other parts of the curriculum.

There are many things one can do before, during or after a telling. Here is a selection:

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● Before a telling, ask the children to fold a piece of A4 paper into eight byfolding it in half lengthways and then crossways. They then unfold it and, asyou tell the story, they draw a picture of a scene from the story in each of theeight squares. This gives the children a transference from the oral form intothe visual or iconic form of representation (Bruner, 1970). Such a task canconsiderably aid subsequent written work.

● After a telling, children in Foundation Stage or Key Stage 1 can draw asequence of pictures telling the story and write a caption for each one.

● Depending on age and ability, children in Key Stage 2 could draw either acomic strip of a story in cartoon form using speech and think bubbles, ora complete written narrative, as I did with ‘The Transports’.

● Ask the children to write a version of the story from the point of view of oneof the characters in it.

● Stop the story at a key point and ask the children to discuss in pairs whatmight have happened next: they then feed back their ideas to the whole group.This is very useful for engagement with the story and for getting the children’sresponses to it. This can lead into drama work.

● Tell the story and then introduce a piece of evidence which gives a different in-terpretation of events in the story (e.g. the story of Guy Fawkes first withoutand then with the Mounteagle letter).

● Tell the story and ask groups of children to prepare freeze frames of significantpoints in the story (see Chapter 8, ‘Drama techniques’). These freeze frames maybe performed one after another, making an enactive representation and inter-pretation of the story. This is also a form of expressive movement.

● Use the story simply as a springboard into discussion, whether of historicalissues and concepts such as cause and consequence, change and continuity, orof moral, cultural and social issues.

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This is just a beginning. Once you have started telling stories as part of your history-teaching repertoire, you will have your own ideas about where to take them for theparticular learners in your teaching context.

● Once the story is secure in the children’s minds, ask them to write it in poeticform.

● Ask the children to write letters or cards from one character in the story to an-other (rather after the fashion of the Ahlbergs’ wonderful Jolly Postmanbooks).

Drama is the art form of social encounters and it offers a rich experience for learners.It also offers an opportunity to construct imaginary worlds from different timesand cultures. It enables speculation, modification and transformation of our under-standing through examining different people’s perspectives, alternative possibilitiesand the consequences of our actions. Through drama one creates a situation with aset of human problems to be resolved in some way: thus it is invaluable as a wayof teaching understanding of historical situations. Drama is a medium par excellence

for teaching history. History is fundamentally about people: in examining evidence(e.g. artefacts and documents from the past), we are trying to get at the lives behindthe evidence. Drama can help us to do this in three ways. First, it can act as a meansfor exploring material presented in stories, documents, artefacts and other forms ofevidence through enactive representations of past events, lives and situations. Facedwith the decisions which people had to make in the past (e.g. whether to flee therebels marching on London to depose you as monarch, or to gather an army of loyalsoldiers and face the rebels in battle), we can begin to understand the historicalsituation from the inside. The second value of drama lies in its engagement of theemotions. Through acting out a scene of Mary I consulting her advisers on whether tostand her ground or to flee, the participants in the drama as well as the observers ex-perience or are privy to the emotions which might be felt by someone in such a crisis:fear, anger, anxiety, pride in oneself, a sense of duty to the country and inner strengthin facing up to the danger. Finally, drama has very strong links with play. In enjoyingimaginative play, children re-enact situations, both familiar ones such as school, andunfamiliar ones such as invasion by aliens from another planet, or knights guardinga castle. They will invent situations, allocate roles, create ‘pretend’ spaces for action(e.g. the forest, the spaceship), and suggest events and actions, literally making it upas they go along. In teaching through drama, teachers will be drawing on some ofthese processes and harnessing children’s natural way of learning.

Beginning teachers quite often shy away from teaching approaches such as drama.There are good reasons for this. First of all, a beginning teacher has not always learnedyet of the need to act, to perform, as an essential part of teaching. The main issue is

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CHAPTER 8

Drama and role-play

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laybehaviour management. It seems much easier and less risky as a beginning teacher to

settle the class with a worksheet, keep them in their places, and avoid a potential riot.These are understandable fears and, with certain classes, one has to go through thiskind of work, getting them to stay on task, to accept the boundaries of your behaviourmanagement and learn to respect you. However I would make a plea to all beginningteachers to know something about drama as a teaching tool, and be ready to useit when they feel sufficiently confident to do so. The potential rewards in terms ofenhancing the quality of teaching and learning are great. The good news for begin-ning teachers is that one does not need to attempt a whole class drama straight away.There are many varieties of drama-teaching techniques which one can use primarilyfor their own value in learning, but also as a means of experimenting with drama andbuilding confidence as a teacher.

Drama techniques

● Conversation: Addressing a child as part of a storytelling as if that child is acharacter in the story. This has already been described in Chapter 7. The childdoes not have to respond, but through the act of addressing the child andmaking eye contact, it can draw children into the story through the immediacyof dialogue. This acts as a change of viewpoint in the story, which I preferto liken to what happens in a ballad which may start off in the third person,but break into dialogue as emotion builds and the characters in the balladexpress themselves verbally (see Chapter 10 for further ideas on using songsand ballads in teaching history).

● Teacher in role: The teacher takes on the point of view of someone else from thepast, and performs a monologue (rather like Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads).This can really serve as a means of bringing the past to life, taking children rightinto the heart of a historical situation as experienced by that one character. JohnFines argues that the power of the teacher in role lies in ‘being able to feedpupils information about the historical situation under consideration; helpingthe class gain confidence in taking on a role themselves’ (Fines and Nichol,1997, p. 196).

● Hot-seating: This is an extension of role-play in which the teacher stays inrole as a character from history and invites the children to ask questionsdirectly of that character. The children thus question or interview the histori-cal character. This should be done before attempting to have the childrenprepare and take on such roles, as a kind of modelling of what is involved.The important point to note here is that it takes substantial preparation forthe teacher to do this well, and the same holds true of children taking onhistorical roles.

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● Making maps or plans: This is an approach described by John Fines (Fines andNichol, 1997). It is a collective activity in which the class make decisions about aplace or a building in which the drama will take place. As such it has somethingof the nature of play: that part of imaginative play in which children allocateroles and set out where the various scenes are going to be enacted. Like other ap-proaches it can be adapted for a range of historical situations (e.g. re-creating anAnglo-Saxon village). From this it is an easy next stage to move children into role.

● Still image/freeze frame: This is a very useful approach which may be adaptedto a range of teaching resources and historical situations. Pupils use their ownbodies to ‘freeze’ a moment in time or a particular theme. It may be donewith a whole class or with a small group of children. For example, as part of asequence of activities designed to engage children with the painting Children’s

Games (Bruegel the elder, 1560), a class of Year 2 children were asked to studythe picture and choose one of the games to represent as a freeze frame. Afew minutes’ preparation time were given to get into position. Then, at a pre-arranged signal, the children ‘froze’ in their poses and held them for a fewmoments to make a living re-creation of the picture (internet reference: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/bruegel/bruegel_childrens_games.jpg.html).

● Active image: Children use their own bodies to bring to life historical situationsby reproducing the actions of the characters. For example, Year 3 children wereshown a video of Vikings rowing up the Thames as part of their term’s workon invaders and settlers. Their teacher drew an outline of the ship on theplayground and the children got into position as Vikings rowing the ship. Theyrowed steadily, then ‘rammed’ the ship into ‘London Bridge’ in an attempt todestroy it, just as the Vikings had on the video.

● Small group: Fines termed this ‘Forum theatre’, a technique in which a smallgroup of children act out part of a historical situation while the rest of the classact as observers and/or commentators. This can be useful for highlighting keymoments in history, or just generally exploring a historical situation based onevidence or story. For example, with the Guy Fawkes story, a small group ofchildren could act out the bringing of the Mounteagle letter to James I’s secretagents and re-create the conversation at that point in time.

● Overheard conversations: These are conversations which add more informa-tion, but which we should not have been able to overhear; for example, HenryVIII meeting with spies to ask them to collect any information which wouldbe useful to him in getting rid of Anne Boleyn. Cartoon pictures of the sortthat feature in the Terry Deary books can be useful here, with the contentof the speech bubbles blanked out for the children to suggest what the charac-ters might be saying. From this starting point they can begin a dialogue orconversation which pairs or small groups can then act out.

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All of these techniques and approaches have their place in teaching history, dependingon one’s purposes for the lesson or sequence of work. In the next part of the chapter, adetailed example is given of one of these drama techniques to show the reader how togo about preparing and using it. Role-play has been selected because of its great valueas a learning approach for understanding a character from the past.

Role-play and hot-seating

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● Meetings: This is a very useful approach in which the drama is rather formallyset up as a meeting, as, for example, discussed in Chapter 13, where the chil-dren re-create the meeting held by the Iceni tribe to decide what to do whenthe Romans recalled the loan from Seneca. The comparative formality of thesituation can lend structure to a drama. Giving a range of roles from thosecharacters who will need to say a great deal, to those who may speak only once,or elect not to speak at all, provides scope for participation at a variety oflevels and the possibility for the shyer, more inhibited children to take a lesserrole. The teacher is also in role and can initiate the drama, but needs to allowthe children to make suggestions and decisions.

● Full drama enactment of a historical situation: This is a very powerful teachingapproach and, like all these approaches, can have a considerable impacton children’s understanding of historical situations. An example is given inChapter 7 of the re-enactment of the story of the transports to Australia. Ratherlike the meeting, but less formal in structure, the children are given role-cardsand again the possibility of taking on greater or lesser roles. In this form ofdrama, some preparation time is needed to prepare lines and actions. Theteacher should also be ready to take on a part, and it may be useful to choosea key role, especially if that character is privy to important and significantinformation on which the narrative of the drama hangs.

● Role-play is a particularly valuable teaching approach for history in the primaryclassroom.

● Although it features in several books about teaching history in the primaryschool, there is very little insight given into how to go about creating andperforming a role-play.

● This chapter will give some examples of how a role-play was created fromhistorical evidence, and its performance and follow-up work.

There is a thin dividing line between story and drama. In fact I like to think of story anddrama as being part of a continuum of an extremely powerful form of representation:symbolic representation in the spoken language used in both; iconic representation in

the images they create in the mind; and enactive representation through the medium ofdoing in drama, and personal re-creation in the mind of the narrator and listener instorytelling. Perhaps one of the reasons for their power and effectiveness in teaching isthat they involve all three forms of representation simultaneously.

In performing a role-play, the teacher steps into the shoes of a character from thepast and becomes that character. Like all the presentation of historical enquiry, it isonly ever an interpretation of that person’s feelings, thoughts, behaviour and motives.However, it can also present the flavour of a period, as well as the individual charac-ter, and to an extent the culture of that period. In role as a wealthy Roman lady, onecan include material on the day-to-day problems of running a Roman household, or,as a Tudor sailor, one can introduce children to the realities of life on board a ship ona long voyage. One speaks to camera as it were, like one of Bennett’s Talking Heads,Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii, or Pauline Collins in Shirley Valentine. In doing so,one gives a kind of commentary on the times from that individual’s viewpoint. Thiscan be immensely useful in helping children to understand the reasons for events,the personal as well as the political beliefs, personalities and motivations which, forexample, caused the split with Rome in Tudor times.

For a role-play it is essential to create a script, even though, as in storytelling,one does not learn it by heart or repeat it from memory. This is because creatingand performing a role-play is something of a test of subject knowledge. I wouldalways recommend that the children ‘hot-seat’ the character afterwards, for thefollowing reasons:

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● It prolongs the special (sometimes magical) atmosphere of the role-play.

● It allows children to probe the character’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs andmotivations.

● It makes possible ‘interaction’ between the children and the character fromhistory.

● It can extend and deepen the content knowledge given in the role-play.

● It allows children to engage in historical enquiry, by asking their own questionsof the character.

Role-play and hot-seating thus make particular demands on the teacher. It is quitepossible to be asked questions to which one does not know the answer. Thoroughpreparation is essential. Not all the material researched will be used in the role-playscript. On some occasions depending on the nature of the questioning, one draws onthe additional information during the hot-seating. The value of this for the teacher isenormous. One gains from the research and preparation in depth a quality of subjectknowledge of a period or problem which is not easily achieved by skimming a rangeof topics in juvenile books or from internet sites. In the preparation the teacher

extends her or his second record (Hexter, 1972) through the interpretation of thematerial, transformation into the form of the script, and performance in the actualrole-play. This second record is then made available to the children through theteacher’s performance and the period of questioning.

For beginning teachers, the question is: How do I go about creating a role-playscript? What follows is an example of a role-play which I created in response to theneed to teach children about the hunger marchers of the 1930s in Britain. In mostjuvenile books this receives cursory treatment: a double-page spread with usually aphotograph of the Jarrow marchers and an account of that march in 1936. To be fair tothe producers of most of these books, their remit is to give a flavour of most aspects ofa historical period or a past society. Thus each aspect of a culture tends to get a double-page spread. The problem with this kind of historical knowledge is that children (andteachers for that matter) are likely to emerge from the reading of it only with the factthat in 1936 some of the workers of Jarrow marched to London to protest at the loss ofjobs and wages and the resultant hardship. The detail of what it was like to live in thosetimes, and the understanding of the historical situation, the causes of the unemploy-ment and the effect it had on working people’s lives, are missing from the learning. Itis hard to assimilate detail from these factual children’s topic books; it is not easy toknow about the detail of a past period or situation from a factual account. Turn it intoa performed narrative, however, and the detail stays with us for much longer.

These follows the script of Thomas Unsworth, a Lancashire hunger marcher, whichI researched, created and performed in 1998.

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THOMAS UNSWORTH: A LANCASHIRE HUNGERMARCHER

Hullo, everyone. I’m just going to come in here and take me boots off, ’cos they don’thalf hurt. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been marching a long way and my feet really hurt.Why was I marching? Well, listen to this and I’ll tell you.

My name is Thomas Unsworth and I come from Bolton in Lancashire. I work in the mill,or I used to. I’m a weaver by trade. I started on the power looms, but my masters saw Iwas a good worker and put me on the hand looms. I did well at first, met Annie, that’s mywife, and we’ve got three little ones, Eva, Frank and Elsie. Everything seemed to be goingso well.We’d got a little house to rent on Canal Street, and the children were growing upfine and strong. But then the hard times came.The boss came to me one day and said hewas putting me on a short week, cutting my wages like.Well, that were bad enough, butthen they said there was no work at all, and I had to tramp the streets, looking forwork – me – a skilled craftsman. I couldn’t get benefit to start with; there were somerules about waiting five weeks; so we managed somehow.Annie went out cleaning inthem big houses by the park, but they paid her hardly anything, and I took the kidscoal-picking on the slag heaps to get enough coal to keep us warm.

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It wasn’t just me and my family, you understand.There were thousands of us, all lookingfor work, walking the streets, going coal-picking.And it went on for months and months.The benefit wasn’t enough, nowhere near enough.The government used to bring outthese leaflets on how you could keep your family on so much a week, but we weren’tgetting even that.There were all sorts of rules, and there would be a gap like, when yougot nowt at all. Folks were pretty desperate. Some blokes used to go out and dig thecoal-dust from between sleepers of the old railway line that ran between the pit and themills. If they were caught doing it, they were arrested and there was a fine of 10 shillings,which was a disaster to folk like us, as you can imagine. Blokes who’d got children whowere suffering perhaps from flu or pneumonia, or old people suffering from TB, theywould go scraping to get a little bit of coal. But they wouldn’t beg.The greatest suffererswere the womenfolk, because they deprived themselves. I reckon that some of themwent to an early grave because of the fact that they starved to death, because they’dgive to us men, and the children, and starve themselves, and that’s a fact.

Then we heard about this movement, the National Unemployed Workers’ Committee orsomething.We just called it the movement.They was organising marches on London, notjust from Bolton, but Manchester and Barrow, Newcastle, Scotland,Wales and Plymouth.We was going to march and lobby the government for full maintenance. On the morningof 31 October 1922 70 of us gathered in Victoria Square.There was lots of speeches andcheering. I said goodbye to Annie and the kids; it was going to be a while before we sawthem again.We set off in good spirits and at Manchester, we met with the 200 men fromSalford and Openshaw.They were not so well kitted out as us. It was cold and wet: thewind and rain soaked their poor underfed, poorly clothed bodies.We shared what we hadwith them, for the Right to Work Council of Bolton had raised funds to help us.

We knew it was going to be hard.We’d have to go to the workhouse in each town and askthe board of guardians for food and a bed for the night.Well, I say a bed; more often it wasa heap of straw.And all we had to eat at first was bread and cheese.We had it for dinner atStockport, supper at Macclesfield, and dinner again the next day.At Leek we actually hadbutter and jam to go with it – don’t know who fixed that. But there was nowhere to sleepthere and we had to bed down, there were three hundred and fifty of us by then, in themarket square.At Ashbourne, things were grim.We had a desperate search for enoughfood, and so it went on.The worst place we came through was St Albans, they’re a load oftoffs there.They didn’t support us and some of the younger men, the hotheads, got intofights and had to be arrested. But not me: I keep out of trouble.And that’s what happened,that’s why I was marching.All we ever wanted was either a proper job or enough moneyto keep ourselves and our families.We never wanted no trouble. I’ll stop a while now – doyou want to ask me any questions about it all?

Research, preparation and creation

I had browsed through a number of juvenile books on Britain since the 1930s andbecome interested in the hunger marchers. Here was a topic likely to appeal tochildren, for the themes of unemployment, hunger, deprivation and peaceful protestare, it would seem, universal in human life, as much with us across the world as in

Britain, in the twenty-first century. I did a library search and came up with six books(this in a university library). Five were about the Jarrow march and the sixth seemedmore general: The Hunger Marchers in Britain 1920–1940 (Kingston, 1982). Thisimmediately intrigued me: did this mean that people were marching on London for20 years? None of the juvenile books had given any indication of such a thing. Theyhad hinted at the fact that there had been other marches, but all attention was focusedon the Jarrow march. What had been happening in 1920 to make people start march-ing then? And had it gone on until 1940? Twenty years is a long time for people to beprotesting. From my own second record of family life, I knew that my mother hadendured considerable hardship and unemployment in the years after she left the millwhere she had worked as a weaver since leaving school. I ordered all six books andskim-read them as a preparatory task for the selection of material.

My original idea was to prepare a role-play as one of the Jarrow marchers. This was,after all, in the National Curriculum for history, though only as a suggestion. Then Irealised that by choosing a different march on which to focus, I would also be teachingthe fact that the marches went on for many years. Here the Preface to Kingston’s bookhad some impact:

The purpose of this book is to restore to the hunger marchers the place which they occupiedduring the interwar years and their proper place in the history of those times. The myth thatJarrow alone can represent the protest against unemployment needs to be dispelled.Whereas two hundred men marched from Jarrow on one occasion, the hunger marcherstrudged to London from every corner of the land, from Devon as well as from Scotland, fromKent as well as from Wales, from Norfolk as well as from Lancashire, six times, and in theirthousands. Behind those thousands were more thousands willing to march and manymore thousands who aided the marchers’ departure from their homes and their progressalong the roads of Britain. The persistent protest, against all odds, of those ill-fed, ill-clad,ill-housed heroes – and heroines – of depression offers a sharp contrast with those shabbydecades.

(Kingston, 1982, p. 7)

I was hooked. I read the book from cover to cover, and if there had been time I wouldhave tried to get hold of Wal Hannington’s book, Unemployed Struggles 1919–1936

(Hannington, 1977) to read further on this subject by someone who had taken part ina number of the marches. However, as all teachers know, time for preparation is finite,even though an infinite amount of preparation could go on. I began to consider whichmarch I would choose. I was interested in the Devon march, as I had lived in Devonfor a number of years and knew places mentioned on the march. I was also attractedto the women’s march, as it is not generally known that women marched as well. Inthe end I selected the south Lancashire march of 1922, as I knew I could do the accentwell, having been born there. The first paragraph introducing the character is inven-tion: Unsworth was a common family name in my local village and Thomas wasmy grandfather’s name. The other names were common first names of the period.The part about becoming a skilled hand loom weaver and going on short weeks is

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based on my mother’s own experience in the cotton mills of Lancashire in the earlypart of this century. The rest is drawn from eyewitness accounts of the march in theKingston book, by those either on the march or involved in its planning and support.Altogether it took about three days to do the reading, thinking and writing, but theend result was a role-play and hot-seating activity which has been used on numerousoccasions with a range of audiences and ages. All have been drawn into the world ofthe 1920s and the 1930s, into the depression years and the hardships. The detail ofpeople digging out coal-dust from between the railway sleepers, risking a fine to do so,is extremely poignant and very moving. The reality of this historical situation stayswith the listener for a long time.

Follow-up work

After the role-play, the character can be hot-seated in role, and further informationand understanding about the period and historical situation communicated. Afterthis, there are a number of possibilities:

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● Simply ask the children to write their story of Thomas Unsworth in their ownwords, either as prose for older children, or as captioned pictures for youngerchildren.

● Create a series of freeze frames of different points in the story. Brainstormwith the children as to what these should be and select children to prepareeach one. Perform them as a sequence.

● Offer small pieces of primary evidence from books of the period: eyewitnessaccounts, diaries and journals, newspaper articles about the marches. Ask thechildren to look for sentences which confirm Thomas Unsworth’s story.

● Show the children some examples of ballad forms and ask them to write thestory as a song or poem.

● Ask the children to prepare the speech which the leader of Thomas’ marchwould have made to the prime minister when they arrived in London to handin their petition.

● Ask the children what is worth marching for in their lives. What wrongs wouldthey like to see righted? What is a good basic standard of living for everyone?

● Show the children a map of England with the physical features and place-names of those towns through which the marchers passed. Ask them to planthe marchers’ journey. Which places might they avoid on the return journeyand where might they stay instead?

Such a story lends itself to citizenship activities as well as to history, drama, music andEnglish. It may seem like a great deal of work, but the rewards in terms of children’s

learning and the establishment of such a story in one’s teaching repertoire are great.This chapter has presented a very brief introduction to drama in history. Readersare encouraged to try out some of the ideas and indeed use the example of thisrole-play to make a start on using drama in their teaching. This chapter should help todemystify some of the processes of developing drama for learning with children.

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Enquiry is a major part of the fundamental syntactic structures of history, but since somuch historical evidence is incomplete, humans tend to ‘fill in the gaps’ by re-creatingpast events and periods through imaginative reconstructions of the past. This can be apowerful teaching tool as well as a genuine aspect of history. This chapter deals withsimulations and games as particular forms of imaginative reconstruction. They areexamples of enactive representations of historical situations, and as such are immenselyvaluable in making even quite complex situations accessible to children of differingeducational needs and attainment. Through simulations and games, as in drama androle-play, children can understand historical situations ‘from the inside’. They havesomething in common with drama and play, to which they are closely related. In bothsimulation and drama children can take on the roles of characters from the past and facethe same problems, struggle with making the same kinds of decisions, and deal with theconsequences of their actions. Like drama, simulation can engage the emotions andstimulate the imagination. It is, however, more controlled than drama. In a simulationthe teacher preparing the material adheres much more closely to the historical situation,whereas in drama there is more freedom for the children to take the story or situationwhere they want it to go. For beginning teachers, simulations are probably easier thandrama to handle. They can be done often with children safely in their seats, although ina simulation involving message sending, there may be some movement around theclassroom, but this can be easily controlled. This chapter presents: an example of asimulation; ideas for devising your own and accessing those already written; examplesof how to use games in history; and historical computer games in children’s learning.

Example of a simulation

Cortez and the conquest of the Aztec Empire

Teaching and class management

In this kind of simulation, there are a number of rounds. An example round is shown inFigure 9.1 and further rounds from this simulation in the Appendix. The idea is that new

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CHAPTER 9

Simulations and games

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Spanish: Round 1

You are Cortez, leader of the Spanish expedition sent by Velasquez, Governer of Cuba,

to explore, trade and search for Christian captives in Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico. You hear

rumours that Velasquez thinks you are too ambitious and plans to have you removed from

the expedition.

Do you:

1 Carry on getting your ships ready and not worry about Velasquez?

2 Cut short your preparations and sail for Yucatan?

Aztecs: Round 1

You are Montezuma, ruler of the great Aztec Empire, which comprises several different tribes.

You hear stories of many signs and omens that the god Quetzelcoatl is returning to take back

the Empire from you. A mountain has been seen moving on the waters of the Gulf: a Spanish

ship.You believe that the white men are signs that the god Quetzelcoatl has come back.

Do you:

3 Send supplies of food and presents to the Spanish?

4 Send a small army to deal with the Spanish invaders?

Consequences sheet: Round 1

Spanish Aztec

1 3 Cortez: You have to deal with a group of soldiers who come to remove you from

the ships.This delays you and you lose some men, but you set off.

Montezuma: Because you do not attack the Spanish, you weaken your position

for the future.

Spanish lose 10 men;Aztecs lose 5000.

1 4 Cortez: You have to deal with a group of soldiers who come to remove you from

the ships.This delays you and you lose some men, but you set off.

Montezuma:Your army attacks the Spanish port of Veracruz and kills some of the

Spanish force.

Spanish lose 25 men;Aztecs lose 5.

2 3 Cortez: you sail away early with your 11 ships and avoid Velasquez’ men.

Montezuma: Because you do not attack the Spanish, you weaken your position

for the future.

Spanish lose 0 men;Aztecs lose 5000.

2 4 Cortez: you sail away early with your 11 ships and avoid Velasquez’ men.

Montezuma:Your army attacks the Spanish port of Veracruz and kills some of the

Spanish force.

Spanish lose 2 men;Aztecs lose 5.

Figure 9.1 Cortez and the conquest of the Aztecs

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information is given to the children in each round, and they have to make a decision asto what to do next. The children then get a consequence sheet to show the outcome oftheir decision. Divide your children into groups of four. At each table have one pair whorepresent the Spanish and one pair who represent the Aztecs. Tell the children there willbe five rounds. In each round they will receive certain information about the historicalsituation and they have to make a decision about what to do. It is a good idea to readthrough each round sheet and each consequence sheet with the whole class and to writethe difficult names and who they are (leaders, gods, tribes, places) on the board before-hand. They write down their decision on a decision sheet, an example of which is givenin Figure 9.2 (you can have enough made up for the class headed up as either theSpanish or the Aztecs, with spaces for the children to write down the consequence and

Blank outline:

Spanish Round 1 decision

We chose: (Number of decision)

Decision in full

The Aztecs chose: (Number of decision)

Decision in full

The consequence was:

Filled in example:

Spanish Round 1 decision

We chose: 2

2 Decision in full: Cut short your preparations and sail for Yucatan.

The Aztecs chose: 3

Decision in full: Send supplies of food and presents to the Spanish.

The consequence was:

2 3 Cortez: you sail away early with your 11 ships and avoid Velasquez’ men.

Montezuma: Because you do not attack the Spanish, you weaken your position for the

future.

Spanish lose 0 men;Aztecs lose 5000

Figure 9.2 Example of a simulation decision sheet

the number of men lost). They then have to keep their decision secret from the other pairuntil they receive the consequence sheet for that round. After each round the childrenreceive a consequence sheet which tells them what has happened as a result of theirdecisions. The two decisions, Spanish and Aztec, have to be taken together. The conse-quence sheets also give the numbers of Spanish soldiers lost and the number of Aztecsoldiers lost. At the end of the simulation the children can add up the points and seewhich teams have lost the fewest or the most soldiers. They also have in their decisionsheets a record of what decisions they took and the consequences of those decisions.

At the start of this simulation the Spanish have 500 men and the Aztecs have100,000. It looks impossible for the Spanish to conquer the Aztec Empire but theyhave some points in their favour. The empire is composed of several tribes, some ofwhom would quite like Montezuma to be toppled from his position as emperor. Thussome of the 100,000 Aztecs at times swing over to the Spanish side and support them.

This is very useful as a teaching tool. The children become very engaged in the simu-lation, waiting eagerly to find out what the outcome of their decision will be. At the sametime, they are being introduced to the information, based on evidence, as to the events ofthe conquest, and, through engaging with the material in the decision-making process,gain a deeper understanding of the events than they would have from reading the wordson the page or watching a video reconstruction. The material also reveals the sheer diffi-culty of the task facing Cortez and the amazing turn of events as two very different cul-tures came into contact for the first time. In reading about the conquest, one skims overmonths and years of time in a few moments. However, in doing the simulation, some ef-fect of the passage of time takes place, even though it is a scaled-down representation ofthe actual time frame of these events. One begins to understand that like many invasionsand conquests, it didn’t all happen overnight. The simulation is a good representation ofthe time, the difficulty, the decision-making and the consequence of one’s actions.

Ideas for devising your own simulation andaccessing those already written

It is perhaps helpful to explain how I went about creating the Aztec simulation. I hadpreviously used other simulations devised by Nichol and the Nuffield Primary HistoryTeam (Fines and Nichol, 1997; Nichol and Dean,1997), in particular the Spanish Armadasimulation available from the Nuffield Primary History website. I had the pattern of thesequence of rounds and outcomes to use as a framework for this simulation. I thenlooked for sources of the evidence to use for the information in each round. At the Aztecsexhibition at the Royal Academy in 2002, I bought just two books. One was the exhibi-tion catalogue, full of colour reproductions of Aztec remains, including artefacts ofall sorts, codexes, pictures and background information on each item in the exhibition.The other, a book, was The Aztecs: Rise and Fall of an Empire (Gruzinski, 1992), whichcontained a mixture of primary and secondary sources. The primary sources includedpictures and many documents: poems translated from native Aztec languages; myths

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and legends; letters written by Hernando Cortez himself; and other documents. Theseare the only two sources I use in teaching the Aztecs, in keeping with the Nuffieldprinciple of economy of sources. The catalogue provides colour pictures for a varietyof purposes, and the documents are useful as evidence for the simulation and for otherpurposes. Using the evidence from this book, I created the simulation by selecting fivekey points in the story at which each leader would have to make a decision. The Armadasimulation by Nichol has three decisions per round: I restricted this to two to make itsimpler. In including the information I tried as far as possible to use materials from theprimary evidence, thus maintaining closeness to the historical situation. As a final stageI went through the simulation and made a numerical tally of how many men each sidelost in each round and established that there would still be some Spanish left over at theend of five rounds. This was more of an acute problem for the Spanish, as they had only500 men to start with (though they did gain several thousand allies from the natives).The Aztecs probably had several million, but I kept it down to 100,000 to offer a contrastin the numbers on each side and to give an idea of how heavily the Spanish wereoutnumbered. The tally is important, for one does not want to be in the middle of asimulation and have children complain they have run out of soldiers on their side!

This is just one kind of simulation and there are others. The Armada has alreadybeen mentioned and there is another excellent one in Fines and Nichol (1997) of anAnglo-Saxon village’s farming year. This is based on a country life simulation and onthe idea of having a number of families in a village. Each family has two chance cardsfor each season of spring and autumn, with two major changes which eachfamily has to face. Each pair or group of children in the class becomes a family. Thecards always have a problem happening to them such as loss of crops, illness or injury,and a good thing, such as a glut of crops or animals. The children have to sendmessages or negotiate orally with the other families to solve their problems. In doingthis simulation with children, it has become apparent to me that the game also dealswith issues of citizenship and community, for it is very clear that each family in thevillage is dependent on the other families. Without mutual dependence and support,some families would starve. Yet another kind of simulation is a planning spaces typeof simulation, an example of which is given in Chapter 6, whereby the children planout an abbey or a new grand mansion. This type of simulation, of planning spaces,may be used in a variety of ways (e.g. mapping out houses, churches, castles, palaces,marketplaces, temples, railways, villages, towns, or a labyrinth for the Minotaur).

Whatever type of simulation one uses, whether it is planning spaces, sequences ofevents, or one involving chance cards, the principles are always the same. Simulationshave three elements: ‘the historical situation; the roles of the characters involved, andthe problem they have to face and have to resolve’ (Fines and Nichol, 1997, p. 203).The historical situation is both the context and the material to be understood: adetailed description of the situation, the people, the place, the problems and possiblesolutions. Some situations or places have common elements, for example, Romantowns or castles. Teachers and children can use their knowledge of these elements to

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plan out a particular example. Simulations require that children take on roles, as inthe examples given in this chapter. Each role needs to be described in sufficient detailfor the player to take realistic decisions, and this can be done by different means:laminated role-cards with sufficient information (an example is given in Chapter 6);the kinds of decision information sheets used in the Aztec simulation in this chapter;or planning the roles in the case of creating a village with a number of differentfamilies. There must always be a problem or a series of problems to be solved.

In fact the key to historical simulations is putting the children in role as decision-makers. Instead of children being passive recipients of information, they have to workwith the information given in the simulation to make it their own. In terms of schematheory, they are actively engaging with the material to be learned, assimilating it and,through the decision-making process, accommodating it to their schema, or mentalmaps of the world. They re-enact or re-create past moments in time, such as Cortez’sdecision to sink his ships so that the Spanish had nowhere to go except onwardsto Tenochtitlan, and Montezuma’s decision, heavily influenced by his religion andparticular worldview, to greet the invading Spanish as gods rather than men. Throughtaking the decision themselves, they come to understand the consequence of thatdecision. This is a powerful way of teaching about cause and consequence. Thestrength of this teaching approach lies in its handing over to the children the power tomake decisions. An analogy may be drawn here with the idea of Seymour Papert, who,in writing about children using Logo (a particular kind of computer language), statedthat it handed the control in learning back to the children (Papert, 1980). Insteadof children responding to what the computer does, they are the ones making thedecisions and giving the commands. This is true of both historical simulations andcertain types of computer games, between which close links can be made.

Using games in teaching history

There are two ways in which one can use games in teaching history. The first is throughplaying historical games devised by the teacher, or produced commercially, as ameans to learning particular factual information, concepts, skills, processes, values andattitudes. The difference with games as opposed to simulations is that the childrenhave slightly less control. For example, if the moves in the game are controlled by dice,spinners or the toss of a coin, then some element of decision-making is removed andmuch more is dependent upon chance, which also plays a role in historical causationand consequence. The second is getting the children to devise their own games, as inthe example given in Cameo 3 in Chapter 1. Both are valuable.

Teachers and commercial games

Again, a major architect of playing games with children is Jon Nichol. I have usedhis Anglo-Saxon invasion game in both its guises, the simple, shorter version and the

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ten-round version, with both intending teachers and children, and it works extremelywell. Jon’s creation does not appear in this book, but the principles can be sum-marised (and see Nichol, 1979). The children are shown a map of the eastern partof England from Kent up to Lincolnshire, stretching as far as Hampshire in thesouthern centre of the country. It is marked out in small squares and on one ofeach of five squares is the name of an Anglo-Saxon tribe: East Saxons, South Saxons,Anglos, Friesians and Jutes. The children play it in groups of five, each child taking onthe role of one tribe. Depending on the toss of a coin, they can settle on a number ofsquares according to an information sheet which gives a kind of chronicle of eventsover 250 years of Anglo-Saxon settlement. The information sheet also sets out therules of the game as to which squares can be taken, working rather like the game ofdots and lines I used to play as a child. At the end of each round, each child writesdown what happened in that round, a positive event which allows them to settlemany squares, or a negative event such as a lost battle or illness, which means theysettle few or no squares. The writing down of the event, good or bad, creates foreach child a kind of Anglo-Saxon chronicle. Thus the activity is useful for literacy,in the reading of the instructions and working in the instruction genre, and in themaking of the chronicle. For history it is immensely valuable, since it teachesconcepts of invasion and settlement through an enactive representation. It alsoteaches that the processes of invasion and settlement by the Anglo-Saxons weregradual and occurred over hundreds of years. Sometimes they gained much ground;at other times settlement was constrained by circumstances. Again the game is agood representation of the notion of gradual settlement. Children learn too that itwasn’t just one tribe, but five different tribes who settled in Britain from differentparts of northern Europe. Even those children with literacy difficulties can join inwith tossing a coin and marking captured squares, though they may need help inwriting their chronicle.

The contrast between this game for teaching concepts of invasion and settlementand those recommended in the QCA’s Schemes of Work could not be more obvious.Figure 9.3 shows what Unit 6B has to offer (and Units 6A and 6C on the Romans andthe Vikings in Britain start with the same two identical lessons).

The first suggested teaching activity is quite a good idea, namely to relate conceptsof moving for various reasons by ourselves and our families to concepts about wholegroups of people migrating in earlier times. But as the author of the unit points out,this would have to be handled with sensitivity and care, especially if there are anyrefugee children in the class. This is not to argue that one should not do this kindof work with children, only that there are alternatives. Instead, storytelling abouta character from Roman, Anglo-Saxon or Viking times could introduce children tothe key concepts of settlement, emigration, immigration, refugees, invasion andconquest. The activities suggest that teachers take opportunities to use and explainthese terms. Explanations without representations of any kind are far less likely to beeither understood or assimilated into children’s schema.

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Lesson 1

Objectives

Children should learn:● to relate their own experience to the concept of settlement

● to recognise that people have been moving between different areas for a long time, and thatsome reasons for moving were the same as those of people alive today

Possible teaching activities

Discuss the children’s and their families’ experiences of moving home to live either in a differentpart of the country or in a different country. Use a map to establish where they moved to and from.Encourage the children to suggest why they or their families moved,and list the reasons given.Helpthem to sort the reasons into those where families chose to move and where they had to move.

Take opportunities to use and explain words such as settlement, emigration, immigration, refugee,and how these are different from words such as invasion, conquest.

Lesson 2Children should learn:● to use the terms ‘invade’ and ‘settle’

● to place the Anglo-Saxon period in a chronological framework

● to recognise characteristics that place Anglo-Saxons as having lived a long time ago in the past

● that Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain and that the period of invasion was followed by a periodof settlement

Possible teaching activities

Ask the children to find the dictionary definitions of the words ‘invade’ and ‘settle’.Ask them towrite their definitions in a two-column grid. Lead a discussion to develop the children’s under-standing of these terms.

Give the children cards with words and phrases that could be connected to either invasion or set-tlement (e.g. stay, arrive, conquer, land, visit, remain). Ask the children to place the cards in thecorrect columns on their grids.Ask them for feedback as to where they placed each word and why.

Establish that groups of people have been visiting, invading and settling in Britain for a very longtime. Ask the children to look at the class timeline and pick out the people and events they havealready learned about (e.g. the Great Fire, Florence Nightingale). Discuss with the children whetherthese people or events happened a long time ago, and which occurred the longest time ago.

Give the children pictures of Anglo-Saxon people. Encourage them to suggest clues whichindicate that these people lived a long time ago. Help the children to place the pictures at theappropriate place on the timeline.

Give the children pictures showing a variety of Anglo-Saxon images (e.g. in armour, in battle, town

life, country life, home life).Ask the children to sort them into invasion and settlement groupings.Source: QCA/DfEE (1998)

Figure 9.3 Extract from QCA scheme of work for the Anglo-Saxons (6B)

The second teaching activity is frankly dull, and has much more to do with literacyout of context than it does with history and literacy in a meaningful context. Theinitial activity has children looking for dictionary definitions of the words ‘invade’ and‘settle’. The teacher then has to ‘lead a discussion to develop children’s understandingof these terms’. The next activity is a sorting activity of words and phrases, placing thecards with key words on them in one of two columns, ‘invade’ and ‘settle’. This activityseems to me to have very little to do with history, being a word-sorting task. The wholeof this part of the lesson seems to be based on an understanding of teaching as tellingand explaining, without a single representation in sight. The next part veers off intochronological work, trying to place the period of Anglo-Saxon settlement on to theclass timeline. The difficulties of teaching time are explored in Chapter 12, and I wouldsuggest that the method in the QCA scheme may not be very helpful. It might bebetter to concentrate on the 250 years or so of Anglo-Saxon settlement. In addition,this is too much for one lesson. It is better to teach a few concepts well, rather thantry to include too much. Despite this, there is more: pictures of Anglo-Saxon people(with no indication that these artists’ images of people from the past are based on anykind of evidence) for children to look for clues that these people lived a long timeago; and to place on the timeline images of Anglo-Saxons previously sorted into‘invade’ and ‘settle’ groupings; and a final ‘discussion’ with the children on the rela-tionship between ‘invasion’ and ‘settlement’. Apart from the dullness of all this and itsheavy literacy focus, it is doubtful whether all children in the class would benefit fromsuch activities. In contrast, the Anglo-Saxon settlement game teaches concepts of‘invasion’ and ‘settlement’ much more powerfully through an enactive representation:the children themselves become the invading and settling tribes.

The idea behind this kind of game may be adapted for other invasions and settlementperiods in British history, and for parts of other study units. In fact, other games whichhave invasion as part of the intrinsic nature of the game, such as chess or chequers, mayalso be adapted. It is also possible to create games based on ‘trail’ games, whereby play-ers follow a trail, using a dice to establish moves. These games can be a representationof time, of various concepts and of factual information. They might incorporate ‘chancecards’ such as those one finds in ‘Monopoly’, treasure cards (status symbols as in the‘Game of Life’), and decision-making (again, the ‘Game of Life’, in which, at the outset,one has to decide whether or not to go to university). The whole point about games, aswith simulations, is that children have to play the role of someone else (in a historicalgame, a character from history), and to enter fully into the historical situation. The gameitself supplies the problems to be faced.

Commercial games which are widely available are also useful for teaching somehistorical knowledge, skills and processes. There are too many to list here but mentionof a few should indicate the possibilities. Games such as ‘Guess Who’ introduceprocesses of reasoning, deduction and elimination to children. ‘Cluedo’ and othermurder games can operate in the same way. Journey games such as ‘Journey ThroughBritain’ involve travelling to a number of locations in the British Isles, and answering,

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es‘Trivial Pursuit’ style, one of several questions, many of which are historical. This kind

of game can teach outline or background knowledge, which can be dismissed as trivia,but none the less some outline knowledge can be useful as a context against which toplace a study in depth. Both are required in the History National Curriculum. Thereare also traditional ancient games, such as ‘Tabla’, a reproduction of a Roman gameavailable commercially, which children can play to gain an understanding of one wayof occupying leisure time for Roman peoples.

An investigation of types of board games and ways of playing can prepare the groundfor children designing and making their own games, as in Cameo 3 (Chapter 1), whichinvolved the children making their own board game of Drake’s voyage around theworld. This may be adapted for other events and other periods, for example, Cortez’sconquest of the Aztecs, Odysseus’ travels, Boudicca’s rebellion and so on. All of thesegame-designing activities require that children engage actively with the historicalsituation, and with the problems faced by characters in the past. Through the act ofknowledge transfer from one genre such as a story or a timeline, into another, that of theboard game, children engage with the material to be learned. When I have done theDrake board game activity with children, the enthusiastic response of the children hasbeen remarkable. Such enthusiasm and enjoyment can be harnessed to learning whatsuch activities have to offer. Once made, the games can become class resources, ormay be used by other classes. I would also suggest that a selection of board games, fordeveloping historical knowledge, skills and processes, be kept in the classroom as anessential teaching resource, as well as valuable activities for children to do once otherwork is completed.

Historical computer games

Properly speaking, it should be my children writing this section rather than myself,since they have field-tested several useful games. The kind of games I am thinking ofare commercial ones such as ‘Settlers’, Pharaoh’ and ‘Cultures’, rather than some ofthe software produced especially for the schools market. Some of the schools gamesare rather dull and pedestrian, and can unwittingly shift the focus from historicallearning to navigation of the screens because of the design of the game. Neither do Imean the sort of game in which one merely has to collect information. In contrast,some of the commercial games replicate the best features of simulation and boardgames. They usually involve the player in role, having to face problems within thehistorical situation, and making decisions. For example, ‘Cultures’ is set in AD 1050and features a group of Vikings settling in America, trading and fighting with otherViking tribes and three races, the Mayans, Indians and Eskimos. They have a rangeof landscapes in which to operate in the wider context of the game, thirty differentoccupational groups and all the elements of resource management, trading, militaryoperations, diplomacy and discovery. There is a detailed booklet setting out how toplay, and there are many different scenarios and problems. One’s success as a player

depends upon one’s ability to balance the wider strategic demands of the game withthe needs and wants of the individual members of one’s clan. This is a simulation ona huge scale. ‘Settlers’ is similar, with the possibility of settling different peoples inhistory, such as the Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. ‘Pharaoh’ does somethingvery much the same, only in Ancient Egyptian times. If I had any doubts aboutchildren playing these games, they were dispelled by overhearing a conversation asone child sat at the keyboard:

It seems to me that the game was teaching, among other things, the fundamentalimportance of the Nile to Egyptian agriculture, the economy, the well-being of thepeople and ultimately the culture of Ancient Egypt itself. This is one use of ICT whichI think is entirely appropriate to history. Much more complex simulations maybe done with computer games than those prepared by teachers, though both arevaluable. In teacher-made simulations and games, one involves the whole class withall the advantages of social learning this brings. The snag with computer games is thatthey are typically for one or two players, although some have scope for multi-playeroperation. I would still argue that having a selection of such games in the classroom,and having children playing them as extension activities, with reporting back to thewhole class, is a valuable approach in enhancing children’s learning.

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Eleanor: I don’t know what’s the matter here. I can’t get mycrops to grow!

Harriet [peering at the screen]: Oh, I see what it is.Your Nile didn’t flood properly! Yourcrops won’t grow if the Nile doesn’t flood.

Introduction: why music?

Music is a fundamental aspect of every human culture. It does not matter where onegoes in the world, there will always be music, song and dance. To understand fully apast society or culture, one needs to know something of that culture’s music, song anddance. Music is so important that people take their music with them to wherever theyare transported, as slaves or prisoners; or as emigrants seeking a better life or fleeingfrom religious or racial persecution. One obvious example is that of the black Africanslaves shipped to the Americas, bringing with them their African rhythms, song anddance traditions. These in turn became synthesised into country and urban bluesusing the guitar, an instrument which was introduced to parts of America from Spainthrough that country’s exploration, conquering and dominance over the native indige-nous cultures. From this rich melting-pot sprang rhythm and blues, rock and roll, ElvisPresley (the first white singer with a ‘black voice’), rock music, reggae, and ultimatelymuch Western popular music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, far removedthough it may seem in some of its more sugary or formulaic manifestations. Musicfulfils a basic human need for self-expression through sound and rhythm. It can alsoact as a vehicle for communication when other forms are banned or frowned upon,serving a political and social purpose, as in the case of the black South African miners,who, forbidden to drum in the traditional way by their white mine-owner bosses,devised a form of drumming on their gumboots which they wore in the mines. Thusthe gumboot dance was born, a highly intricate form of dance in which the minersbeat out traditional rhythms in patterns of movement. Their bosses could not punishthem for this, since they were not using drums! These same miners also sing inthe kind of four-part harmony – soprano, alto, tenor and bass – learned from whiteChristian missionaries in their schools and churches, an aspect of white high (and low)art culture transported to Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Wherever people go, in time and place, they take their music with them.

This chapter deals with how to use music, song and dance in teaching history. It isnot so much concerned with the performance aspect of these forms of expression, as

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CHAPTER 10

Music and dance

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m with their use and value in the primary curriculum. This is not to say that perform-ance is of no importance; only that in history teaching one is much more interestedin songs, music and dance as historical evidence, as artefacts made by people for avariety of purposes: to express a mood or feeling; to communicate emotion; incelebration of customs or rituals which are central features of a culture (e.g. carols inEuropean societies, or circumcision party songs in Madagascar); to act as social com-mentary on the times; to give a personal response to wars and disasters of all sorts;and a host of other purposes. Thus this chapter presents: arguments for using thevalue of music in the teaching of history; links to storytelling, drama and expressivemovement; examples of suitable songs, music and dance for the primary age range; acase study example of using music with children as historical evidence; planning andclass management of such lessons; follow-up work; and sources. Most books whichaim to guide beginning teachers in teaching history give some general suggestionsfor the use of music in teaching. However, there is very little guidance given in howto use such music with children. This chapter is different. It gives detailed guidanceon how to use a range of songs, music and dance with children, even if one is not amusic specialist.

The value of music in history

There are several arguments for using music in history. The first and most importantone is given in the introduction to this chapter, namely the central part played by musicin all cultures across time and place. If one regards history as an umbrella discipline(Cooper, 1992, 2000), embracing all aspects of a culture including science, technology,art and craft, language and literature, religious beliefs, customs and practices, social andpolitical aspects and music, then music is as deserving of our attention as any otheraspect. Of course there is the role of historical significance to consider in the selectionof historical content and processes to be taught, but music has a part to play in helpingus and children to understand what life was like in the past. Music, dance and song areevidence from the past: a sea-shanty to help sailors with the labour of raising sail oranchor; a waulking song from the Hebrides used by weavers making Harris tweed; alove-song lamenting a loved one going off to war; or a courtly dance. Music in all itsforms can tell us something about a past society, ways of thinking, and the kinds ofinstruments and musical forms used. Through the re-enactment of the song tune ordance, children can gain access to the minds and emotions of people from the past. Theycan enter imaginatively into what it might have been like to be a sailor, a soldier or amaidservant. Finally, children can present their understanding of the past throughmusic: a song, a dance or a composition.

The next set of reasons are to do with children’s learning. Theories of children’slearning are dealt with in greater depth in Chapter 2, but some brief mention is requiredhere. Children learn in different ways: their learning is individual and idiosyncractic,related to personality and cognitive development. Two of the most important theories in

this context are Bruner’s theory of mental representation (Bruner, 1970), and Gardner’stheory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983, 1993a). The notion of there being threeways of representing the world mentally – enactive, iconic and symbolic representation– was explored in Chapter 2. Gardner introduced the notion of there being eight intelli-gences: linguistic; musical; logical-mathematical; spatial; bodily-kinaesthetic; interper-sonal; intrapersonal; and naturalist. In terms of Gardner’s multiple intelligences, itfollows that some children in each class will have a predisposition towards musicalintelligence in their individual combination of intelligences; therefore one needs toprovide for children who learn primarily through this channel. Music is a powerful formof enactive and symbolic representation with the additional advantage that it engagespeople simultaneously through the intellect and through emotions. One only has tothink of how the makers of, for example, romantic movies employ this knowledgeto their advantage, to heighten emotion at key points in a story. In short, music can beseen to reach parts of children other parts of the curriculum do not reach. In terms ofteaching for diversity and for inclusion we omit music at our peril, since we ignore itshuge potential for enhancing learning among a wide range of learners.

The final reason is in some ways the least important, though its statutory forcewould seem to render it the most important reason for the inclusion of music, both asa teaching approach and a form of evidence. The History National Curriculum (HNC)(DES, 1991; DES/QCA, 1995; DfEE, 1999c) requires it. Since the inception of the HNC,it has always been a requirement, one of a range of forms of historical evidenceconsidered appropriate for historical enquiry by primary age children.

Links to storytelling, drama and expressive movement

One of the main forms of music considered in this chapter for use in the primarycurriculum is British traditional folk-song. There are good reasons for this. Folk-songwas composed by ordinary people for an audience of ordinary people. British tradi-tional folk-song encompasses a wide range of songs: ballads, shorter lyrical songs, worksongs, songs of political commentary, love-songs, songs which tell of how politicalevents in the wider world impinged upon the lives of ordinary people, broadside balladsgiving news of the latest horrible murder (thus fulfilling the role of the tabloids inrelaying atrocities, disasters, murders and salacious stories), and songs of ritual andceremony. They are an incredibly rich resource, a kind of underground music of theBritish Isles and deserving of everyone’s attention.

There are strong links between storytelling and folk-songs. Narrative is an importantpart of folk-song. Many songs tell a story: all ballads do. To tell a story in the form ofsong heightens the emotion generated by the song. One of the distinguishing featuresof folk-song in general and ballads in particular is the shift in narrative voice, from thethird person to one of the characters in the song speaking in the first person, movingthe story forward through dialogue. Ballads have an economy of words: there is oftenno introductory ‘he said’; rather the listener is left to infer from the meaning who is

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speaking and to whom. The move from narrative into dialogue is another device whichintensifies drama and emotion. Given these properties of folk-songs, they are eminentlysuitable as a basis for drama, for a re-enactment of past events. Such drama may bemimed, spoken or executed through expressive movement. A song or ballad may bedivided into a number of scenes. Each group of children in a class can take one sceneand devise a freeze frame to communicate that point in the narrative, and the wholesequence of scenes or freeze frames performed as expressive movement. Through thiskind of learning activity, all children, including those with literacy difficulties, canaccess the meaning of the song and its historical content. These are enactive, kinaes-thetic representations or forms of experience: through their very nature a wide range oflearners can gain access to the curriculum. To experience historical content through onegenre and express it in another genre involves the active engagement of learners withthe material to be learned. From the point of view of schema theory the children areworking on the material, and making it part of their map of the world.

Examples of songs for use with children

‘My young man’

This is a well-known children’s song, eminently suitable for use in the early years. It hasa number of advantages, not least a very memorable catchy tune. I sang it one year to agroup of postgraduate student-teachers: they were still singing it in the pub three dayslater. It is a lively, strong dance tune in a major key. It bounces along with joy, an emo-tion totally in keeping with the sentiments of the song. It may be sung unaccompaniedor with some simple accompaniment on guitar. It needs at the most only three chords(D, G and A major) although you can get away with using just two: D and A major. Icannot recommend too highly the use of the guitar in primary classrooms. It isrelatively easy to learn to a good enough standard to use in school; one can strum chordson it; and very importantly for beginning teachers, one can maintain eye contact withthe children while playing. For those still learning class and behaviour management,this is extremely important. I use a melodeon myself to accompany this song, becausegiven the bouncy nature of the instrument, it goes well with the song. However,beginning teachers may not have time to learn the melodeon; the guitar is much easierto learn in a short space of time.

The advantages and possibilities for the song are as follows:

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● In terms of history, the song contains evidence of how women used to dress atthe time of the song, probably in Victorian times. This could be corroborated bythe children through examining pictures of women in Victorian times andcomparing the clothes in the pictures to the clothes in the song. One possibilityfor pictures is to use Beatrice Potter books, as she dressed her animal characters

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cein Victorian clothes. There are many other sources however, including internetimages and pictures in class topic books. The overarching historical questionmight be: ‘What did women wear in Victorian times?’ This could generate anenquiry into clothes of that period and comparison work with clothes we weartoday. Resourceful teachers will recognise the possibilities for collecting someVictorian-style items to go with the dressing-up clothes, and the play whichmight be generated from this song, as well as creating pictures of people inVictorian dress. By treating the song as evidence, even relatively young childrencan begin to address the question: ‘How do we know what people wore inVictorian times?’

● The song contains some archaic vocabulary, (e.g. bonnet, kirtle, shawl, petti-coat) (National Literacy Strategy Year 4 Term 2 (DfEE, 1998)). This presentsopportunities for work at word level. The word ‘kirtle’ is relatively easilyexplained through a simple examination of its root word ‘kirt’, the removal ofthe ending ‘le’ and the addition of ‘s’ at the front. It becomes the modern ‘skirt’,and indeed a kirtle was an old term for either a dress or a skirt.

● For very young children, the song introduces colours: blue, green, brown andwhite. One possibility for extension work, having done some enquiry usingpictures into what else Victorian women wore, is to generate additional versesusing other colours. This activity links into the next set of possibilities for thesong, which are its further uses in terms of literacy.

● This is a very good song for children learning to read. It uses a very simplestructure with a great deal of repetition. Children are quickly able to predictthe structure of each verse, even if not all the class are actually reading thewords on the page, the flip-chart or the overhead projector. Only the last versediffers, in that the young lady is going to the church rather than to the fair.Other than that, each verse is the same other than the item of clothing, thecolour and the following line. Thus, to create additional verses, children needonly provide part of a verse. To date I have no research evidence on this, but Isuspect that the combination of music and words acts on the memory in adeeper, more lasting way than do words alone, fixing in memory the letters ofeach word, or its graphic shape. There is a research project to be done on thisaspect of using songs in the classroom!

● The tune is in fact a dance tune following the common format of a 32-bar tuneplayed AABB, where A is the first eight bars of the tune, played twice, and B isthe second eight bars, also played twice. This format is used in British folkdance and in much morris music. Thus there are possibilities for using it for afolk dance. However, I would simply play it as a dance tune either live or oneof the recordings available of it and invite the children to move to the musicas the tune suggests, using their imaginations. Some children will leap about

All in all, this song is a marvellous resource for the primary age range, with possibilitiesfor historical enquiry, interpretation of evidence, range and depth of historical under-standing, literacy work (the song can be a text for the literacy hour), and cross-curricularlinks to the study of pictures, creative work, song-writing, music and dance. I have yet tomeet a child (or adult for that matter) who did not respond to this simple, infectioussong. It is an excellent resource for the whole primary age range from 3 to 11 years, butof particular value in the early years when one cannot have too many songs.

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m indiscriminately, but there will be those who begin to exploit the inherentrhythm, and they will find themselves doing a traditional English hop-step – the tune is crying out for this. The ability to perform this step will comein useful in dance sessions.

I have a bonnet trimmed with blue

Do you wear it? Yes, I do.

When do you wear it? When I can,

Going to the fair with my young man.

Chorus:

My young man, my young man

Going to the fair with my young man. (twice)

I have a kirtle trimmed with green

The finest one that ever you’ve seen,

When do you wear it? When I can,

Going to the fair with my young man.

Chorus

I have a big shawl trimmed with brown

The finest one in all the town,

When do you wear it? When I can,

Going to the fair with my young man.

Chorus

I have a petticoat trimmed with white

Do you wear it? Yes, I might.

When do you wear it? When I can,

Going to the church with my young man.

Chorus: (last time only)

My young man, my young man

Going to the church with my young man. (twice)

Figure 10.1 Song: ‘My Young Man’

‘Greensleeves’

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Alas, my love, you do me wrong

To cast me off discourteously

For I have loved you well and long

Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was all my joy

Greensleeves was my delight

Greensleeves was my heart of gold

And who but my lady greensleeves.

Your vows you’ve broken, like my heart

Oh, why did you so enrapture me?

Now I remain in a world apart

But my heart remains in captivity.

I have been ready at your hand

To grant whatever you would crave

I have both wagered life and land

Your love and good-will for to have.

If you intend thus to disdain

It does the more enrapture me

And even so, I still remain

A love in captivity.

My men were clothed all in green

And they did ever wait on thee

All this was gallant to be seen

And yet thou wouldst not love me.

Thou couldst desire no earthly thing

But still thou hadst it readily.

Thy music still to play and sing

And yet thou wouldst not love me.

Well, I will pray to God on high

That thou my constancy mayst see

And that yet once before I die

Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me.

Ah, Greensleeves, now farewell, adieu

To God I pray to prosper thee

For I am still thy lover true

Come once again and love me.

Figure 10.2 Song: ‘Greensleeves’

This is a beautiful song and one to which I have found children respond very readily.It was supposedly composed by Henry VIII, but there is no certainty about thecomposer. In introducing the song, teachers are best to say: ‘I think . . .’ or ‘It ispossible that the song was composed by Henry VIII’. Variants of ‘Greensleeves’ maybe found throughout the English folk tradition, both as song airs and dance tunes.For this song I present an account of how I used it with a Year 4 class of 28 children.The context for this work was this class, 17 of whom had reading ages below theirchronological age, in an urban school serving a housing estate on the edge of London.Five of the children had specific language difficulties, two of whom were in theprocess of being statemented. Altogether in terms of literacy the class was skewedtowards the lower end of the ability range. They were a delightful if challengingclass to teach. I taught them history, literacy and music every Wednesday afternoonfor a term. The medium-term plan was developed in response to their interestsduring the early introductory outline work on the Tudors. They were particularlyinterested in Henry VIII and Elizabeth I; thus the plan I developed reflected theirinterest. I introduced the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ in the first week by playing it on theconcertina as an example of a Tudor song. Purists might object to this anachronism,for the concertina is a Victorian instrument rather than a Tudor one, but it is what Iplay; so I used that. It is played just as easily on the recorder, which is much more aninstrument of the period and readily available in schools for children and teachersalike. The children enjoyed the tune and hummed along to it, some swaying in timeto the music.

I then placed an overhead transparency of the first verse on the projector, and wesang the verse, first unaccompanied, and then accompanied by the concertina. Thechildren learned the words easily, despite not understanding all of them. At the endof the first verse, I asked them if there was anything which they did not understand,and they asked about the words ‘to cast me off discourteously’. I explained what thesemeant and we sang the verse again twice. This formed part of a 25-minute musicsession at the end of the afternoon during which I played a number of Tudor,eighteenth-century and Victorian dance tunes. The following week, when we settledon the carpet for the music part of the lesson, several children came to me and said,‘We have learned the verse and chorus from last week. Can we have some moreplease?’ I had not asked the children to learn it; they had done so out of a desire torepeat the pleasurable experience which they had had in the lesson. I taught themanother verse that week and we sang the two verses. At the start of the third week’swhole afternoon session, one boy came to me and told me he had learned the tune onthe recorder. Again, I had not asked him to do this: he had been motivated by thebeauty of the tune and that desire to repeat the enjoyable experience. Over five weekswe learned the whole song by heart and accompanied with concertina and recorder:several children were playing the tune on the recorder by this time.

In terms of the history curriculum, I was working almost entirely within KeyElement 2: Range and Depth of Historical Understanding as far as the song on its

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own was concerned. The children were learning about the lives of men, women andchildren in Tudor times by experiencing music which would have been commonplaceat that time. The song and tune are evidence from that period. They exercised theirhistorical imagination through the re-creation of the song and their choice of recorderfor accompaniment. During the weeks in which we were learning this song, the chil-dren were studying Henry VIII, through portraits (see Chapter 5), written evidence(see Chapter 4) and storytelling (see Chapter 7). Some of the written evidence usedcomprised pieces written describing Henry VIII by, for example, the VenetianAmbassador to the Court of Henry. The evidence gave accounts of his many skillsin sport, dance and music as well as physical descriptions. Another set of evidencecomprised parts of three love letters written by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, duringthe period when she was away from Court and he was desperate to see and loveher. The children did some work on these letters (see Chapter 4), challenging thoughthese texts were. Gradually the song began to take on new meaning for the children.They asked me: ‘Did Henry VIII really compose this song?’ ‘If he did, was it to AnneBoleyn?’ (who at that stage did indeed ‘cast him off discourteously’). Set into contextwith the other pieces of evidence, the possibilities for interpretation of the songincreased. We did not answer the questions definitely: I let the children express theirown opinions. It was enough that they were engaging in the skills and processes ofhistorical enquiry and ‘asking and answering questions about the past’ (Key Element4: Historical Enquiry, DES/QCA, 1995).

‘The Horse’s Bransle’ (pronounced ‘brawl’)

During these same weeks I was playing this tune to the children. It had a remarkableimpact on them. It was one of a selection of tunes which I assembled to play to thechildren, and it became one of the most requested. For some of the lessons a researchassistant was observing my teaching and she recorded the response of the children tothe music. For the earlier part of each afternoon’s lesson I worked the children hard.I will be honest about the fact that I used the promise of music to encourage some ofthe children to tackle and complete the tasks I set (‘If you don’t finish we won’t havetime for music!’). But bribery is, if we are honest, an acceptable weapon in theteacher’s armoury. The moment I started playing tunes, the researcher noted a palp-able change in the atmosphere in the classroom of almost visible relaxation in thechildren’s posture and body language, particularly noticeable when I played this tune.We asked ourselves ‘What were the children learning?’ It was not easy to answer thisquestion, but it was clear that something was happening. (There is another researchproject in there.) The tune is very appealing. It is a 48-bar tune with the structureAABBCC. The first two parts are in a major key; the third part shifts into a minor ormodal key depending on which version is played. It should be noted here that manytraditional tunes do not keep to the ‘rules’ of the conventional harmony of Westernmusic, perhaps because much of it was played on homemade instruments such

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as pipes, whistles and bagpipes. The availability of notes on the instruments wouldhave affected the tunes played, which is one explanation for the many variants oftraditional tunes and airs which abound. The strangeness of the shift from one keyto another fascinated the children (similar shifts occur in ‘Greensleeves’) and theylistened absolutely rapt. We worked on the rhythm which is a straightforward 4/4with four beats to a bar, by clapping out the rhythm while sitting on the carpet. Thistook place most weeks as part of the music session until the last week of the term,when I took them into the hall and taught them a simple dance to go with the music.The music is open to interpretation, and indeed several different dances can beperformed to it, but this I what I did.

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Figure 10.3 Tune: ‘The Horse’s Bransle’ (Thoinot Arbeau, 1588)

This may be repeated as many times as wished. I have not stipulated that boys andgirls should pair up: whether or not they do depends on their age and the schoolethos. Sometimes boys prefer to dance with boys and girls with girls! This is a simpledance which teaches some of the basics of folk dancing and doesn’t involve swinging,which is a move that I have observed children (and adults, for that matter) can havesome difficulty with. In performing this dance the children are engaging in thesimple sort of dance which would have been done by the upper and lower classesalike in Tudor times. They are engaged in imaginative reinterpretation of the past aswell as in enjoyable physical exercise. They are learning to enact moves in a sequence:sequencing being a skill which cuts across the curriculum (maths, English, PE, history,dance, music). In working together as a whole group, they are involved in co-operativegroup work.

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PREPARATION: MOVING TO THE MUSIC

● Children find a space in the hall and stand still.

● To the A music, they move for eight steps round the hall, and stand still and clap foreight steps. Repeat several times, using the B and then the C music. Count out theeight beats with the children.This is to get them used to listening and counting thebeats/steps.

● Teacher demonstrate the side-step, galloping movement for eight steps.

● Form the children into one long line down the length of the hall and get them togallop across the hall for eight steps in time to the C music.

● Demonstrate (with an assistant or child): a back to back; a right-hand turn: aleft-hand turn.

● Organise the children into pairs and get them to do these movements to the B music.

● Form the pairs of children into two long lines facing each other across the hall.

THE DANCE

A1 Lines of children holding hands taking four steps forward and four steps back.Lines of children take eight steps forward, one line make arches and the othergoes through the arches; turn to face again.

A2 Repeat A1.

B1 Let go hands. Back-to-back right shoulder, repeat left shoulder (16 steps).

B2 Right-hand turn partner (eight steps); left-hand turn partner (eight steps).

C1/C2 Top two couples gallop down to bottom of set; the rest clap in time tothe music.

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CASE STUDY: ‘AUSTRALIA’, A SHORT BALLAD FROMSUFFOLK

This case study refers to material already presented in Chapter 7 on storytelling, namelythe ‘Story of the Transports’. My learning objectives for the song were as follows:

● To corroborate the ‘Story of the Transports’ and the nature of crime and punishmentin the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by investigating the words of a popularsong of the time (history).

Come all you young fellows,

Whereso’er you may be

Come listen a while to my story.

When I was a young man,

Me age seventeen,

I ought to been serving Victoria, our Queen.

But those hard-hearted judges,

Oh, how cruel they be

To send us poor lads to Australia.

I fell in with a damsel,

She was handsome and gay,

I neglected me work,

More and more, every day.

And to keep her like a lady

I went on the highway,

And for that I was sent to Australia.

Now the judges, they stand

With their whips in their hands,

They drive us, like horses,

To plough up the land.

You should see us poor young fellows

Working in that jail yard;

How hard is our fate in Australia.

Australia,Australia,

I would ne’er see no more,

I’m worn out with fever,

Cast down to Death’s door.

But should I live to see,

Say, seven years more,

I would then bid adieu to Australia.

Figure 10.4 Song: ‘Australia’

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● To use the text as a model for learning about and writing in the ballad form (literacy).

● To transfer knowledge of folk tunes played the previous week to composing a tunefor this song.

I found the song in a collection but had no tune for it in my memory. I had heard thesource of the song – Bob Hart, an old country singer, performed the song in a pub inSuffolk in 1973 – but I had no recording and no recall of the tune. However, I did not viewthis as a problem, rather as an opportunity. Singers in the past may not always have hada tune to go with a song (the words of which they might have purchased from a streetvendor, a broadside ballad seller of the type described in Mayhew (1851)).This would nothave deterred anyone.The singer would have drawn upon an existing tune in his or hermemory, or composed a new one.

The previous week, I had played to the children, a Year 6 class (for background andcontext see Chapter 7), tunes such as ‘Click go the Shears’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Iplayed these for enjoyment and to illustrate the point that music travels around theworld, people taking their own music with them to far distant places, in this case, thetransports to Australia. Both tunes started life in England with different sets of words.Both tunes surface in Australia with new words, one about sheep shearing, while theother has been turned into a sort of unofficial national anthem.You cannot keep a goodtune down!

I played the tunes again and reminded the children of how the words had been replacedby new sets of words. I showed them the words to ‘Australia’ and asked the children ifthey would work out the ‘story’ of events in the song.This they found easy to do.(Readers: take a few minutes to do the same and consider the emotions felt by theperson narrating the events of the song.) I then asked the children to look at the rhymescheme of the song and we commented on the pattern of rhyme. I explained that thiswas one of many ballad forms.The four-line stanza with the end of the second andfourth lines rhyming is a very common pattern found in ballads, though it is not the onlyone. I set the task of taking the ‘Story of the Transports’ which they had heard, workedon, acted out and rewritten in their own words the previous week, and turning that storyinto ‘The Ballad of Henry and Susannah’ (see Chapter 7, Figure 7.2).

There is some sound theory behind the setting of this task. I was concerned herewith the children learning in a way which would stay with them – in other words, deeply– about the transports to Australia.Through this task they would be transferring theirexisting knowledge and understanding to a new genre: from prose to poetry; fromstraight narration to the ballad form. In so doing, they would be revisiting theirknowledge of the story. Some children would also learn the new concept of the balladform: a poem or song which tells a story. Some might already know this and be revisingthis knowledge. In terms of writing, the demands were not too severe.The plot andsequence of events was already familiar.Thus the children only had to work at shapingthe material into the new genre (Rosen, 1988, 1993).They did not have to dealsimultaneously with both compositional and secretarial aspects of the writing task,because the compositional demands had already been dealt with in the previous week’swork. Certainly the children wrote poems of high quality, of which the example shown,from one of the least able boys, is only one example.

Planning and class management

Planning and preparation

By far the most important aspect of preparation for using music in teaching history, orindeed in any subject, is to listen to the music a great deal and make it part of one’sdaily life. Two separate pieces of wisdom, both from different sources, come to mindhere. The first is from a fellow teacher educator, a classically and jazz-trained musician,who maintained that one of the biggest influences over what music we grow to like iswhat we actually hear most frequently. Popular music is dominated by what getsplayed over the airwaves; thus people come to like what they hear frequently, and tobuy it. We grow to love what we are accustomed to hearing. Often, people do not getto hear any genuine traditional music either of their own or any other culture, anddismiss it without due consideration, or they hear watered-down, bowdlerised orpopularised versions and assume that is all folk music is. There is a wealth of musicavailable, and one of the aims of this chapter is to point the reader towards some of thebest of what is out there. In any case, folk music is worth listening to, part of the richcultural heritage of any society, and valuable for the Anglocentric history curriculumof the English primary school. The second piece of wisdom is an old Irish saying that:‘It takes 21 years to become a piper: 7 years’ listening; 7 years’ practising; and 7 years’playing.’ No one is expecting hard-pressed primary teachers to become expert musi-cians, but the listening is important. Play tapes of the music while driving to workor doing the ironing, until you find yourself humming the tunes and rememberingfragments of the verses. Whether or not one learns the songs and tunes oneself, it isimportant that children get to hear the music frequently too. The plan should involvea clear method for learning the song (children will very quickly do this by heart),and have objectives related to appropriate aspects of the primary curriculum. Theexamples in this chapter have shown four different songs or tunes being used indifferent ways for a variety of learning objectives (and Chapter 1 contains a cameo ofa song being used as a source of evidence about housemaids’ lives). In each case thesong or tune is part of a selection of evidence, investigated and experienced in con-junction with other forms of evidence.

Follow-up work

Most of the songs and tunes given here incorporate some ideas for follow-up work. Iam using this term in an all-embracing sense of work which ‘fits’ on either side of the

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For homework I set the tasks of completing the ballad and composing a new tune for thesong. I explained that the old tune had become lost and, like singers of old, we wouldneed to supply a tune for ‘Australia’. I asked them to think about the emotions in thesong (sorrow, sadness, regret, loneliness, hatred of judges, longing to see England again).

musical work. Below are some generic suggestions, and some specific ones for otheractivities/sources of evidence which may be used with music.

Generic suggestions

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● Choose songs around a theme to which the historical content is related (e.g.mine work, weaving, sea songs) so that the song becomes another source ofevidence to use alongside others.

● Ask the children to emphasise particular kinds of words or references toevents using highlighters, to aid the process of extracting information fromthe songs as texts.

● Ask the children to set information from different sources side by side incolumns to aid comparison of what the different source types are saying.

● Sing songs or play tunes several times purely for enjoyment.

● Ask the children who might have sung the song, and for what purposes; andwho might have composed the song.

● Using the existing verse pattern, ask the children to generate additional verses.

● After performing a dance, ask the children what the dance tells us about peoplewho lived at that time and performed such dances. From doing simple danceswith children as described with ‘The Horse’s Bransle’, they gave me answerssuch as: people were very fit then; they must have been quite intelligentbecause they made up these dances; they were very social (sic) because theyliked to dance with other people; and they enjoyed dancing to beautiful tunes.

Introduction

Classroom discourse is of immense importance in teaching, regardless of subjectmatter. It can take many forms: whole class chanting; ritual (as in taking the register);recitation; teacher and pupil questioning; question-and-answer sessions to monitorunderstanding of previous work; reading round the class; story reading; storytelling;explanation and exposition; drama; role-play; formal debate; whole class discussion;and small group discussion. Some of these forms are easier to execute than others:for example, the last two forms of discussion are not seen as often as some of theothers. The inherent difficulties of managing class talk: of allotting turns fairly;of drawing in reluctant speakers; and of steering the discussion without dominatingit, all mean that the phrase ‘class discussion’ which appears on many a lesson planmay mean or turn out to be something very different, more like a recitation orquestion-and-answer session for recall of previous learning, than genuine discussion.None the less, it is important for teachers to have explicit understandings of thevarieties of classroom discourse, and to work towards mastery of all its forms. Talkis so important in classrooms that it cannot be left to chance and good intentions.Used well, talk is a fundamental aspect of learning. As Alexander (2000, p. 430)puts it:

The talk that takes place between teacher and pupil – and less commonly amongst pupilsthemselves – is not merely the vehicle for the exchange of information. It is a vital tool oflearning.

What does all this mean in terms of teaching history in the primary classroom? Itfollows that we must offer our children as many opportunities as possible for fruitfulinteraction both with the teacher and with other children. There is a wealth of ideasfor generating a range of speaking and listening activities in this book, but twoaspects deserve closer consideration. These aspects are explored in this chapter whichpresents two sections on key aspects of classroom discourse in teaching history:questioning and Socratic dialogue.

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Classroom discourse andgeneric teaching approaches

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Forms of classroom discourse

Questioning

Questioning is important in the teaching of history, for two reasons. First of all it isa generic teaching skill. It is of vital importance to master it. There is not the spacefor a whole treatise on questioning here, but some brief points may be made. It isimportant for teachers to be aware of the types of questions they ask and the highlyskilled nature of this particular aspect of teaching. Phillips (2002) asks whetherquestioning is ‘a clever art’ or ‘a competence to be learned?’ Certainly one can becomecompetent at questioning, but I would argue that from early struggles with question-ing, through a basic level of competence, one can achieve a kind of mastery, in whichit becomes almost an art form. One only has to watch experienced teachers perform:their questions seem to flow; children respond appropriately; genuine discussiondevelops; and children are evidently learning. ‘Effective questioning involves anextraordinarily complex array of characteristic features, traits and skills’ (Phillips,2002, p. 66; Brown and Edmondson, 1984; Dillon, 1988). To these I would add deepsubject knowledge as an essential component. It is important to examine the types ofquestions one asks and to develop some metacognition of the processes and featuresof effective questioning.

Second, questioning is an essential part of the process of historical enquiry: ‘Historyis thus a discipline which has at its core the framing of questions, the questioning ofsources within the context of the situation at the time’ (Dean, 1995, p. 2). Too often,children are asked to ‘find out’ about an aspect of a past society with no more specificdirection, using children’s topic books or juvenile literature, or these days the inter-net. Such finding out is not genuine historical enquiry for it is not driven by questionsand therefore there is no attempt to follow the processes of historical enquiry. Theseare as summed up by Fines and Nichol (1997) quoting Hexter (1972) presented inChapter 2. The problem with ‘finding out’ is that the children have no means ofassessing which information they find is relevant or valid. Faced with the wealthof information there tends to be available nowadays, the temptation is to copyindiscriminately. This is neither good history nor good learning. Fortunately, ques-tions now have a higher profile in exemplary material for teachers. In the QCASchemes of Work each example unit has a ‘Key Question’ aiming, like Counsell’s‘Big Question’, to drive along historical enquiry and to generate further questions(Counsell, 1997).

Generating good historical questions is an important skill in both teacher andchildren alike. Nichol (1984, pp. 46–7) devised an extremely useful list of questiontypes in history teaching. Teachers can use these questions to promote certainresponses and ways of thinking, to analyse the kinds of questions they ask, and todevelop metacognition or at least awareness of the question types they use mostfrequently.

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The challenge for the beginning teacher of history is to be able to employ all ofNichol’s question types, moving from the information (or ‘closed’) questions to theunderstanding, imagination, reasoning and reflection (or ‘open’) questions. We haveto ask ourselves what kinds of thinking we wish to promote in our children.

As well as teaching asking questions, it is of central importance that childrenask questions also. Too often in classrooms it is teachers who ask the questions andchildren who answer them. Apart from being a statutory requirement in the HistoryNational Curriculum (DfEE, 1999c), it is vital that children get to ask their own ques-tions for several reasons. When we present them with historical evidence, they oftenhave their own questions which they don’t get to ask in the classroom setting. Thesequestions can be of good quality for generating a historical enquiry, or they can betrivial questions. The ‘enquiry questions’ may be used to generate an enquiry withinseveral weeks’ worth of a medium-term plan.

1 A data-recall question (e.g. ‘When was the battle of X?’) requires the pupil toremember facts without putting them to any use.

2 A ‘naming’ question (e.g. ‘What is the name of Y?’) asks the pupil simply toname something without showing how it relates to any particular situation.

3 An ‘observation’ question (e.g. ‘What is happening in the picture?’) requirespupils to describe something without relating it to their knowledge of thesituation.

4 A ‘reasoning’ question (e.g. ‘What does X tell us about Y?’) expects pupils toexplain something.

5 A ‘speculative’ question (e.g. ‘How do you think X came about?’) requirespupils to speculate about historical situations.

6 An ‘empathetic’ question (e.g. ‘How did X feel about that?’) asks pupils toempathise with people in historical situations.

7 A ‘hypothesis-generating’ question (e.g. ‘Why did X occur at that time?’)requires pupils to speculate in a more advanced way, using historicalknowledge.

8 A ‘problem-solving’ question (e.g. ‘What evidence is there that X happened toY?’) expects pupils to weigh up evidence.

9 An ‘evidence-questioning’ question (e.g. ‘How reliable is X to tell us about Y?’)asks pupils to interrogate the evidence.

10 A ‘synthesising’ question (e.g. ‘From what you have found out, write anaccount of . . .’) pulls all the information together and encourages the pupil toresolve the problem.

(Nichol, 1984, pp. 46–7)

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Questioning is a skill which needs to be taught explicitly, and I have found thefollowing exercise to be useful and valuable when starting an enquiry with children.In a Year 5 class I gave all the children a piece of coloured card and asked them towrite down one question about the topic. Here is a list of child-generated questionsabout the topic of the Victorians.

The children’s questions

● When did Queen Victoria rule?

● Did children go to school in Victorian times?

● Where did Victorians live?

● Who were the Victorians?

● What date did Queen Victoria die?

● What did people eat in Victorian times?

● Did Queen Victoria get married and who to?

● Did she have any children and what were their names?

● Did Victorians have trains?

● Did Queen Victoria have any pets?

● What were Queen Victoria’s hobbies?

● Where did Victorian children go to school?

● What toys did Victorian children have?

● What was Queen Victoria’s middle name?

● What did her husband do?

● When did Queen Victoria die?

● What was her favourite food?

● How old was Queen Victoria when she got married?

● Why did Victoria become Queen?

I suggested to the children that we could be detectives and find out the answersto some of these questions. I said that some questions could be called trivial, in thatyou could just look up the information in a book or on the internet and find out theanswer in a few minutes. Others I called enquiry questions: ones which could takea great deal of investigation to find out about, and which could have complicatedanswers: for example, ‘Did all Victorian children go to school?’ might lead us tothink about whether only rich children go or whether there was a change during theVictorian period. I asked for three volunteers to read each question in turn: the classhad to advise them which pile to put them in. For this sorting activity there would be

three piles: trivial questions; enquiry questions; and those which were ‘in between’,which might lead to a small enquiry.

The purposes of this activity were these: to consider what sort of questions thechildren were asking, and to engage with the concepts of trivial and enquiry ques-tions. There was no suggestion that there were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ questions, only thatthere were different types of question. This exercise raises awareness of differenttypes of questions and their uses. Another approach with older children would be toshare Nichol’s framework of question types shown earlier in this chapter and to askthem to sort the questions according to this framework.

Socratic dialogue

Questions also play a role in the next form of classroom discourse to be considered:Socratic dialogue. This may seem a far cry from primary classrooms, but it is a veryancient form of teaching and learning in European culture. It is attributed to Socrates(Russell, 1961), though it may have been practised by Ancient Greek philosophersbefore Socrates. He taught by engaging in a particular kind of dialogue with hisstudents. He would pretend ignorance on some matter or topic, and ask his studentsto set out their ideas or beliefs on that subject. He would then demonstrate through aseries of questions that the student did not know as much as he thought he did, or thatthere were logical inconsistencies in his thinking (Fox, 1995, p. 134).

These ancient dialogues seem a world away from present-day classrooms, but theycapture some key ideas about learning and teaching, and a mode of discourse which wecan still use today. The first key point is that the teacher and pupils are collaborators orpartners in an investigation about a topic from which they can both learn. This is incontrast to a mode of discourse in which the teacher is the authority on the topic andthe pupils are the ignorant ones, there to learn from the teacher. The next key idea isthat in discussion we can test out ideas critically, examining them for weaknesses andinconsistencies. Socrates saw himself as a ‘midwife of truth’ (Russell, 1961; Fox, 1995),using his own form of questioning to help the student to discover errors in thinking andbring to the surface of his mind a new understanding of a topic or problem. It is thiskind of dialogue which is used in various forms in this book, not question-and-answersessions for factual recall or naming questions, but questions which require children todraw upon their existing knowledge and to apply it to historical situations. In Socraticdialogue we enact teaching as conversation. We engage children in enquiry andstruggle and do it by asking questions which encourage application of previousknowledge and which result in conversation. In Chapter 13, two examples are given ofcreating ancient ships in the playground with children, one Roman, one Viking. Both ofthese lessons used Socratic dialogue to encourage children to draw upon what theyalready knew of ships powered by oars, and their knowledge of measurement, to movethe children towards the imaginative reconstruction of being a slave or soldier aboard afighting ship.

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This chapter is a controversial one in many ways. It deals with aspects of teachinghistory which need to be considered, but which are not as straightforward as sometextbooks would suggest. These aspects are:

The title of this chapter makes reference to the fact that these are all importantaspects to some degree. Ofsted inspectors may well be looking for them as some of thecriteria by which they will judge the quality of history teaching in schools. The refer-ence in the title, ‘Ticking the boxes’, is to a kind of assessment which, though it mightinform teachers to some extent about children’s attainment and progress in history,may not be as useful or valuable as other forms of assessment. The topics of thischapter are interrelated and there will be some cross-referencing between topics asappropriate. Thus, to employ the current educational jargon somewhat ironically, thischapter attempts to hit several targets by dealing with a number of important issues.Possible teaching approaches and strategies will be given at the end of sections of thischapter where appropriate.

Chronology and the teaching of time

Chronology as one of the key elements is clearly important, but I would like to arguethat too great an emphasis can be given to chronology in the teaching of primary his-tory, given the small amount of time available for teaching this subject. There are ofcourse good reasons for teaching about time. Any understanding of time is under-pinned by understanding about sequencing of events and the skill of sequencing,

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Ticking the boxes

● chronology and teaching about time;

● outline and background knowledge;

● the use of QCA schemes of work and commercial schemes;

● the use of ICT in all its forms;

● assessment.

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m about numerical methods of showing periods of time, understanding of scale, knowl-edge of the language of time and time vocabulary. In order to understand historicalsituations, it is often necessary to sequence events in chronological order. An under-standing of the correct or probable sequence of events (depending on the evidence ofthe sources we consult) can lead to an understanding of cause and effect, two othermajor related historical concepts.

As well as an understanding of sequencing and the ability to do it, children alsoneed an understanding of numerical methods of representing time. This is morenecessary and appropriate in Key Stage 2 than in Key Stage 1, where the emphasisneeds to be on sequencing, with simple timelines using, for example, a child’s age increating a personal timeline. From this early stage one then needs to move on to theuse of dates, decades, centuries and the whole system of AD/BC reckoning. This has tobe linked to the concept of scale, since the divisions on a timeline, say of decadesin the Roman occupation of Britain, use scale as an intrinsic organising concept.Ten metres on a timeline running around a classroom wall might represent a decadeor a century, depending on the scale chosen. It is important that the scale divisionsare accurate, so that we can give children some understanding of the time vocab-ulary used, the passage of time, and ultimately an understanding of long passagesof time. The word ‘ultimately’ is used here to reaffirm the difficulty children (andsome adults) have in comprehending huge stretches of time: such understandingdoes not happen overnight. A timeline which extends from a classroom down acorridor and out into the hall can be very useful as a visual representation of thevastness of time.

The language of time and time vocabulary need to be taught to give childrensome way of communicating their understanding and negotiating the commonways of expressing time, which they might encounter in children’s history texts,in video programmes, and on the internet. These are often taken for granted byadults, but can take anything from months to in some cases years for childrento master. Consider, for example, the common confusion over ‘yesterday’ and‘tomorrow’ among 4- and 5-year-olds. It takes a while to establish the correct useof these terms, perhaps through ‘news’ and journal-keeping activities in the earlyyears. Stowe and Haydn (2000) point to a wide range of ways of expressing timereference points: in fact a rich and varied vocabulary of time language. Time isthus a complex construct with mathematical, linguistic, conceptual and psychologicalaspects. The existing research evidence suggests that learning about time is difficultand occurs at different rates in different learners (see e.g. Stowe and Haydn, 2000).Stowe and Haydn argue strongly for the centrality of time both to the substantivenature of history and to children’s understanding of cause and effect, continuityand change. They recommend more teaching about chronology rather than less.Yet despite the strengths of their arguments, I would still maintain that it is morecrucial at primary level to teach about historical enquiry and interpretation thanabout chronology.

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xesIt is perhaps an accident that chronology came to be the first key element.

At any rate, its physical position in the National Curriculum document tends tosuggest that it is of greatest importance. Chronology is one of the eight overarchingconcepts of history, part of the substantive structures of the discipline. Historicalenquiry is both an overarching concept, and also one of the syntactic processes whichdefine history as a discipline. There is a strong case for historical enquiry beingplaced first in the curriculum documents. First, it would highlight its central impor-tance in history, its defining nature. Second, it would draw teachers’ attentio toit, simply by virtue of the fact that it comes first. Many teachers do not havespecialist education in history and may not appreciate its fundamental importanceto the discipline. To have it placed first, with perhaps historical interpretation second,would stress its importance. The existing arrangement, with chronology and rangeand depth of historical understanding coming first, places emphasis inadvertentlyon part of the substance of history and plays down the importance of enquiry andinterpretation.

The final part of the argument against having too great a focus on chronology is thepragmatic (and ironic) necessity of using the time available for history teaching ascarefully as possible. Recent trends in the primary curriculum have emphasised theimportance of literacy, numeracy and science at the expense of other subjects. Theintroduction of the Primary National Strategy heralds a possible change in emphasisin the primary curriculum, but one must sound a note of caution here. The strategymay imply a wider curriculum with more time available for other foundation sub-jects, but the continued national testing and inspection regime is likely to mitigateagainst new allocations of time to a wider range of subjects in primary schools.Unless the national testing apparatus and punitive inspection system are dismantled,the primary curriculum will continue much as it has done for the past few years, withteachers feeling obliged to teach to the tests in order to protect their schools and theirchildren. Generally speaking history has some 4 per cent of curriculum time, either45 minutes a week or blocked in half-term or termly units. The crux of the argumentis this. With so little time available for history teaching, surely it is better to focus onenquiry, interpretation of evidence and the exercise of the historical imagination thanto fritter away precious time on less crucial aspects. There is the additional dangerthat a major focus on chronology rather than enquiry can lead teachers towards thetransmission of historical information rather than the kind of collective collaborativeenquiry presented in this book. In an ideal world, with a less crowded primarycurriculum, the teaching of time could be highlighted as much as that of enquiry, butthis is not an ideal world.

There is a case for teaching an understanding of time across the curriculum, as anongoing part of literacy, numeracy, science and personal and social education, givenits complex nature and the scarcity of time for teaching history. The list below givessome ideas for teaching about time, based partly on the excellent work done by Stoweand Haydn (2000) in this field.

Ideas for teaching about time

Outline knowledge:The Ancient Greeks

As well as knowledge in depth, children need some outline or background knowledgeabout periods in history. Dean (1995) suggests ways of achieving this in all areas ofstudy, either at the beginning of a topic or alongside an in-depth enquiry. Such outlinework helps to establish an overview, a chronological framework and a backgroundcontext for the in-depth topic.

Strategies for outline/background knowledge

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● Simulations and games can help to build up ‘mini-chronologies’ of particularhistorical events, such as the Cortez simulation in Chapter 9. The structure ofthis simulation shows the sequence of events, and the decision-making assistsan understanding of cause and consequence.

● Storytelling likewise is based on a sequence of events, problems and theirresolution. In re-creating stories, children are sequencing events.

● Drama and role-play can help to ‘fix’ a sequence of events in children’s minds.

● Using time language in all its variations consistently and with representationsof what the different concepts mean is important throughout primary educa-tion, but particularly in the early years. To establish even basic concepts suchas ‘yesterday’, ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’, children in the early years can be askedto draw pictures of themselves and what they were doing, and what they willbe doing, on these days.

● Visual representations of time, such as timelines of various kinds, should beused consistently in the primary years as part of outline/background knowledge.

● Using visual evidence, such as art, buildings and artefacts, can help to developchildren’s associative networks in relation to particular forms of art and archi-tecture, for example, to particular periods.

● Topic book blitz: Using children’s topic books (the kinds that often seem toact as a decorative backdrop to history lessons), the children record on to cardsbetween two and five interesting sentences about the Greeks or Romans orwhatever. These are pooled and listed. A number of headings are provided andthe children sort the facts under the headings, thus revisiting the informationand physically organising it. They then circulate with their notebooks, record-ing one fact from each heading; these are then used in the next strategy. (Anexample of this is given in Chapter 13.)

● Concept webs: The children write the title of the topic (e.g. ‘The Tudors’) in thecentre of a piece of paper, then draw radiating lines, one for each heading,

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Ticking the boxes

Figure 12.1 Concept web

QCA schemes of work and commercial schemes

QCA schemes of work

The QCA schemes are both a blessing and a curse. The thinking behind their creationwas sound, but teachers’ and schools’ responses to them might have been predicted.The basic premise in the history schemes is that for each theme, topic or period fromthe History National Curriculum there are one or two exemplar schemes, setting outwhat is to be taught in each lesson. The current list is available on the internet athttp://www.qca.org.uk/ages3–14/subjects/history.html.

Note that these schemes are a mere selection from what is to be taught. These arethe suggestions for historical content from pages 16 and 19 of the History Curriculumdocument. The importance of the distinction between black and grey ink in thecurriculum document has already been noted in Chapter 1. There is no statutory forcein what is printed in grey ink. The content is suggestions only and teachers are free to

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m containing the one fact which belongs under that heading (see Figure 12.1).Concept webs can also be done without the information collection, purely asan assessment exercise of what the children already know about the topic. Ifchildren do this at the beginning and end of a topic it may be used as a form ofassessment.

● Split topics: The topic can be divided into different aspects such as work, chil-dren, education, main events or decades. In groups the children research one as-pect or decade, and present their findings to the rest of the class in one of severalways: a poster giving a visual window on that period, or as newspaper headlines.

● Asking and answering questions: Children ask questions and other childrenanswer them, looking up the answers in the books. This may also be done asa quiz.

● Timelines: These can be created by the children and take many differentforms: annotated wall displays; pictures and date cards pegged on lines strungacross the classroom; parallel timelines displaying synchronous events indifferent cultures; a long timeline stretching from one classroom wall rightdown the corridor outside and into the hall to represent long periods of time.

● Using pictures: Here is an example using Greek pots. A teacher is starting atopic on the Greeks with a Year 5 class. Initial questioning has revealed that thechildren have very little knowledge or understanding of this period and itspeople, apart from one girl who has been to the Parthenon in Athens while onholiday. The teacher has collected about 16 pictures of Greek pots, which coverall aspects of life. There are enough for one per pair of children. The childrenhave to find out three things about life in Ancient Greece from the pictures ontheir pots, and report back to the class (adapted from Dean, 1995).

teach other content if they consider it to be more valuable or of greater significance.In reality, many teachers are unsure of this distinction and try to teach too muchcontent at the expense of teaching historical skills and processes. For teachers with nospecialist background or interest in history, the QCA schemes would seem to offer alifeline, a way through the morass. They obviate the need for selection of materialto be taught, for setting learning outcomes, for detailed planning and for selection ofresources, since everything is set out and presented as a ready-to-use package forteachers. Above all they remove the need for teacher decision-making, for criticalthinking, and for the exercise of the full amalgam of pedagogical content knowledge.The only missing items are the resources themselves. QCA staff involved in thedesign and making of these schemes never intended that they would be followedslavishly by teachers. Rather they expected that they would be adapted for eachschool’s particular context and range of learners. Instead of this, there has been atendency to stick closely to them and to make them the basis of planning and teach-ing in history: an alternative History National Curriculum in fact (Claire, 2002). Onecan understand this tendency. Hard-pressed teachers, exhausted from literacy andnumeracy teaching in the mornings, with the detailed planning which underpinsthese literacy and numeracy hours, do not have much time to spare for the same kindof planning for other foundation subjects, which in any case have little time allocationor priority in the curriculum. The QCA schemes are a welcome ready-made packagewhich, given their official nature, surely guarantee the blessing and approval ofOfsted inspectors. This is unfortunate.

The trouble is that some of these schemes are simply not very good. They arehighly variable in quality. Many of them start with a general activity on time andsome of the lesson plans are downright dull (see Chapter 9). They do each have anoverarching question which is good, but the early emphasis on chronology tends toplay down the leading role which the question ought to have on steering the enquiryof each unit. Having said that, the schemes may be drawn upon for some teachingideas, but are best not followed slavishly.

Commercial schemes

There are many commercial schemes and packs available for the teaching of historyin primary schools. Some seek to offer a complete ‘solution’ as if the teaching ofhistory were a problem to be solved. They try to encompass subject knowledge,teaching ideas, resources and assessment, and include photocopiable master sheetsfor use with children. The problem with these schemes is that they deskill the teacher,removing some of the thinking and professional decision-making (Crawford, 1996).Activities are often heavily based on reading and writing, and are very low level:colouring in; cloze exercises; filling in boxes; drawing pictures; cutting and sticking.The best advice that can be given is to evaluate such commercial resources and to takethe best aspects of them to use with children.

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There are both good uses of ICT in history and poor ones. It is essential thatbeginning teachers are able to distinguish between the two. ICT is often hailed asa revolutionary set of tools which will completely transform teaching and learningat most and greatly enhance it at the very least. There is considerable investment bygovernment in ICT in schools, and pressure to use ICT in teaching across the curricu-lum. The reality is probably less extreme than the usual exaggerated claims. Usedwell, ICT can contribute a great deal to the teaching of history, but it is important tobe very clear about the ways in which it can enhance learning and teaching in thissubject. In this section, the definition of ICT embraces all technological tools andmedia, including audio, video, digital and video cameras, computers and software, theinternet and interactive whiteboards. The first four will be dealt with first; thesecond section is devoted to computers and all related aspects.

Audio, video and cameras

Audio tapes can be immensely useful in making stories and written documentsaccessible to children with literacy difficulties. Stories can be taped and a listeningcorner established in the classroom with players and headsets to provide the audiochannel for children to help with the written word. Likewise, documents can be readaloud on to tape, to enable children working with them to play back several times tohelp them with challenging texts. Some commercial schemes provide audio-tapedversions of the books in the pack. Tape-recorders are also useful for assessment. I haveused the technique of having a tape-recorder running while I go around the classasking the children for one thing they have learned from a lesson. This makes apermanent record of the assessment, and gives the teacher access to the wide varietyof learning which can result from creative teaching. For example, I used this tech-nique with the Year 6 class who did the work on the ‘Story of the Transports’. This wasat the end of the first morning, when we did the storytelling, the drama preparation,the drama itself, the writing and the music. Here are some of the children’s responses:

‘I learned that the concertina and the melodeon are both musical instruments.’

‘I learned what a convict is and what happened to them.’

‘I learned that tunes went around the world.’

‘I learned that poor people had not enough to eat.’

‘I learned that punishments were very harsh in Victorian times.’

‘I learned that men, women and children were all in one big room in prison.’

‘I learned that there are different rhythms in tunes like jig and reel.’

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I have also used audio tape to record pairs of children in assessment interviews,probing more deeply into what they learned and how they learned it.

Video, like the QCA schemes of work, is something of a mixed blessing in theteaching of history. There is a great deal of material available of varying quality. Someseries are excellent such as the Landmark Series and the Watch Series with MagicGrandad. However, the sheer quantity of video material around, and the ease ofplanning and teaching which it invites, is something of a problem. I have no system-atically gathered evidence on this, but many students on placement tell me that thestandard format for each week’s history lesson is to have the children watch a videoand then set comprehension questions on it. The problem is that there is no historicalenquiry, no questioning and interpretation of evidence. In a sense there is someexercise of the historical imagination, in particular in the short drama episodesre-creating past events, but arguably the children should be engaging in the dramathemselves rather than watching others do it. Another problem with some videomaterials is that they tend towards gimmicky presentation, as if this rather dullhistorical material needs to be dressed up in order to engage children’s interest: ratherlike a children’s TV show with wacky presenters, two- or three-minute items toprevent boredom, and silly music or sound effects. This type of programme devaluesthe intrinsic interest and value of the historical materials. Using other teachingapproaches, children can be fully engaged with even challenging material which doesfull justice to both the historical discipline and their capability as learners. It is easyto understand why hard-pressed teachers who possibly lack confidence in their ownknowledge of history and how to teach it turn to video as a fairly easy solution. Myown view is that it should be used sparingly, if at all, and it is essential to preview toascertain whether the material is suitable for one’s purposes. Below is a list of sug-gestions of good uses of video material for different teaching and learning purposes.

Strategies for using video and cameras

‘I learned how a concertina is played.’

‘I learned that it took almost a year to sail across to the other side of the world.’

‘I learned that you could be hung for stealing a silver spoon.’

‘I learned that it took weeks to travel across England on the stage-coach.’

‘I learned how Sydney got its name.’

● Providing confirmation of interpretations of evidence.

● To teach interpretations of evidence. A class could watch several video clipsfrom recent films about Queen Elizabeth I and discuss the ways in which hercharacter and image are portrayed.

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Computers

According to Haydn (2000), one of the main factors influencing whether or not teach-ers use computers in their teaching of history is the difficulty of having time to planworthwhile activities integrating the use of computers. The word ‘worthwhile’ isimportant here. Government documentation itself stresses this notion:

Trainees must be taught how to decide when the use of ICT is beneficial to achieveteaching objectives in primary history, and when the use of ICT would be less effective orinappropriate.

(TTA, 1998)

The general rule for teachers to apply is that the computer should be used where itenhances the possibilities for learning in history. This isn’t always the case. For exam-ple, in a software package on the Victorians, one of the tasks was to scroll along a time-line of events in the period and move any anachronistic events. The operation of thescrolling was difficult, and since a timeline is predominantly a visual representationof time, a long horizontal or vertical timeline would be more suitable. Confining it tothe limited space of a TV screen seems somewhat inappropriate. Some ofthe educational software packages have tended to be rather dull and of poor quality,lacking in genuine historical activities. Even the ones which promise more (such asthose simulating archaeological digs) have disadvantages. In the ones I have used, thenavigation through the chambers of the dig has been so confusing that it has detractedfrom the historical learning which might be possible. Many of the computer’s claimedadvantages for learning turn out to be nothing of the kind in reality. It is hailed as agenuinely interactive medium; for example, when children are using CD-ROMs or theinternet to search and locate information. However, much of the interaction is at thelevel of flicking a remote control button. Sparrowhawk (1995) observed 200 primaryschoolchildren using CD-ROMs and found that their activity was mostly undirectedbrowsing. History is much more than finding and retrieving information. As Haydnpoints out: ‘The key to developing pupils’ historical understanding is their ability to

● To examine how characters and events from history have been portrayed incomparison with other sources.

● Use short clips as a springboard to drama and role-play.

● Use video material of artefacts and remains which are otherwise inaccessiblefor the children (e.g. Ancient Greek remains, remains from far distant cultures).

● Digital cameras can be very useful in making history trails for children to usein towns and villages to investigate buildings, or at historical sites.

● Video cameras may be used to record drama done by the children, so that theycan examine their own interpretation of events and characters in the drama.

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xesanalyse and deploy information after they have accessed it’ (Haydn, 2000, p. 103). The

most appropriate uses of ICT assist children to do just that. The other centrallyimportant point is that the discipline of history is more than just accumulatinginformation. Genuine enquiry processes should be used, following Hexter’s frame-work (see Chapter 2). Most misused in my experience are CD-ROMs and theinternet in purely searching, browsing and locating information. The best and mostappropriate uses in my view are as listed below.

Good uses of information technology

● Word processing: This is a valuable tool for editing and organising historicalinformation. It is so obvious a use that it is sometimes overlooked, but it isinvaluable for a range of purposes. It may be used for sorting information intomanageable categories for children to analyse, or to help children construct ac-counts and explanations. There are facilities for selecting and highlighting textin various ways, moving and deleting information, searching for particularwords, sequencing, and making connections. It is not merely for the organisa-tion and presenting of historical understanding, though that is useful, but canalso assist with analysis of documents.

● Data handling: Databases are excellent vehicles for handling large amounts ofinformation which would otherwise be difficult to sort through. They can helpdevelop questioning skills and refine hypotheses. Many document types canbe transformed into databases, including: medical officers’ reports, whichyield information on what people died of; graveyard information, which cangive some idea of life-span; and census returns. Street directories are excellentsources of information about business, commercial and social life in Victoriantimes. They contain evidence about fairly well-off people: businesspeople, gen-tlefolk, shop owners and the like. The urban poor and unskilled labourers arenot in these documents. As Dean (1995) points out, they are already arrangedin the form of a database, and she gives a clear and very helpful account of howto set about making a database from part of a street directory with the wholeclass, using file-cards to record the information before transferring it on to adatabase. There are also many databases already set up and available online.For example, there is a database of Spanish ships which sailed in the Armadaat tbls.hypermart.net/history/1588armada/database.html. Children can searchthis database on a number of fields and find out, for example, how many shipsmade it home to Spain, how many went missing, and how many werewrecked. From this kind of information they can begin to build up an under-standing of how great a disaster this was for King Philip II of Spain and whatpart the weather played in the defeat of the Armada. The Old Bailey site has adatabase of the proceedings of 45,000 trials from 1715 to 1799 and would

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The fundamental point about using computers for history is that it should exploitthose aspects and the power of computers to do things which would otherwise bedifficult or tedious using other media, for example, databases. It should not be usedfor unfocused ‘finding out’, or purely for the presentation of written work, or as abribe to make an activity seem more palatable. If it is used for finding out informationwhich needs to be preceded by questioning activities and followed by evaluation ofthe material found, ask questions such as:

make excellent support material for work on the ‘Story of the Transports’ (seeChapter 7), or crime and punishment in general. The site can be searched indifferent ways on a range of fields, or it can be browsed for notable trials. Theproceedings of some of these trials provide useful documents to assist childrento access a wide range of evidence, using techniques and approaches describedin Chapter 4. With either a ready prepared database, or one the children makethemselves, children will need to ask questions. Databases are thus very usefulfor developing questioning skills. One technique is to ask the children to com-pose three statements about the information on the database and ask threequestions. A simple question might be ‘How many people were hanged fortheir crimes in the 1720s?’ A more complex question might be ‘Did crime in-crease in the eighteenth century?’ From questioning and investigating thedatabase, children can move on to testing hypotheses such as: ‘Returning fromtransportation before the sentence was complete was punishable by death.’

● Simulations and games: This is an area where commercial games producershave excelled over educational software producers so far, in the scope andcomplexity of their games, not to mention the graphics. There is a section inChapter 9 on historical computer games, but the main point about them is thatthey put children in role as decision-makers in complex and detailed historicalsituations. Children engage actively and imaginatively with the situation,learning all kinds of factual and conceptual information and experiencingcause and effect.

● Images: The internet is an excellent source of images which can be used forhistorical investigation. For example, after detailed enquiry into Elizabeth Iusing one of her portraits, children could be set the task of finding and inves-tigating another portrait of her showing her in a very different way. Theywould carry out the investigation independently, using the skills they had beentaught through the whole class work on portraits.

● Who produced this website and for what kind of audience?

● Can I trust the information on this site?

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Typing ‘Florence Nightingale’ into a search engine will bring up a vast array of sites,which will include all kinds of documents, from teenagers’ essays on her to collectionsof her letters. Children need to be able to assess information and genre types and usethis knowledge to decide whether or not the information or evidence is going to beimportant or valuable to them.

Nowadays we can add the technology of interactive whiteboards which open up awhole range of possibilities in linking the board to the internet. Instead of individualchildren or pairs working at the computer, activities such as searches or databasework may be done with the whole class. Teachers can model how to do these activi-ties, including the all-important questioning and evaluation of information andevidence, or carry out investigations as whole class activities. It will probably be along time before interactive whiteboards are standard technology in schools, but forthose who have them they are a splendid resource.

A final word follows on management of ICT and making sure you are ‘covered’ forinspections. It is hard to integrate computers into lessons, for if you have two childrenon a computer doing a task they are not participating in what the rest of the class isdoing. Some primary schools have gone down the road of having computer suites asdo secondary schools, but these can be a mixed blessing: they are good for databasework or document work with the whole class, but I find that, with several computersin one place, time can be soaked up on troubleshooting technical problems. I wouldsuggest having one or two computers in the classroom if space permits, and settingsome ongoing tasks which children can do if other work is complete. As for inspection,the broad definition of ICT can be helpful here. If one is using an overhead projectorto show a colour image to the class, or a two-minute video clip, or a tape-recording ofyourself reading a document, you are using ICT and can safely tick that box.

Assessment

Issues

Some textbooks on teaching history in the primary school almost seem to suggest thatassessment in history is relatively straightforward. However, it is likely that it is farfrom straightforward or easy. Successive Ofsted reports have commented on the poorquality of much assessment in history as a recurrent issue. For example, theOfsted report for 2002/2003 states that: ‘Assessment of pupils’ standards and progressremains a weakness in one third of schools’ (Ofsted, 2003, p. 2). Previous reports had

● How can I check the truth of this information?

● Is the site trying to persuade or sell something?

● What sort of information is this?

● Is this information or evidence of value for my enquiry?

commented on the tendency of teachers to mark only aspects of literacy, such asspelling and punctuation. The recall of factual information or imaginative writing waslikely to have only ticks or smiley faces. Since one of the functions of assessment, inparticular formative assessment, is to move children on in terms of understandingwhat they need to do to improve, the kind of assessment reported on by Ofsted isclearly inadequate. It is clear from the same Ofsted reports that much low-level workis set, involving recall of factual information, colouring in pictures, comprehensionwork, copying text from topic books, completing cloze exercises and worksheets. Suchwork is difficult to assess in terms of the level descriptions in the National Curriculum.The problem of assessment is directly related to inappropriate teaching activities,which in itself is caused by a lack of full understanding of the nature of history and itssubstantive and syntactic structures. Moreover, assessment of history very often hasto take second place to assessment in the core areas of English, maths and science.

Another reason for the difficulties in assessment is the nature of the level descrip-tors themselves. The five key elements (now ‘Knowledge, Skills and Understanding’ inthe latest version of the National Curriculum) are the basis for assessment. They are:

Generally speaking, children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 would be expectedto be working at levels 1–3. In Key Stage 2, children would be expected to be workingat levels 2–5. Thus in the primary age range we are mainly concerned with levels 1–5.The problem with these key elements is that they do not appear evenly through thelevel descriptors. For example, Chronology occupies most of level 1, appears in levels2 and 3 and virtually disappears for the rest of the level descriptors, surfacing only ina part sentence with Organisation and communication in levels 4–8. Historical inter-pretation does not appear in level 1; only in levels 2–8. As one moves through the lev-els, much more space is given to Historical enquiry, giving the misleading impressionthat it is only higher up the age range that enquiry is important. The levels are meantto be used summatively rather than for ongoing formative assessment. Since forma-tive assessment has been shown to be far more central to children’s learning thansummative assessment, it would seem sensible to focus on formative assessment inhistory. Bage suggests breaking down the statements in the level descriptors intoshorter child-friendly statements, and gives examples in his book (Bage, 2000). Whileit is a good idea to involve children in self-assessment, it is unlikely that this will solvethe whole problem of the difficulties of assessing history using a flawed set of leveldescriptors which do not map on to the programme of study.

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1 Chronology

2 Knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in the past

3 Historical interpretation

4 Historical enquiry

5 Organisation and communication.

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xesInstead, it is worth considering alternative forms of assessment, with a focus on

formative assessment. It seems to me that what is needed is some kind of assessmentsystem which is nearer to individual lesson objectives than to global descriptionsof what children might be able to do at the end of each year. It is important to go backto what one actually does with children and to build the assessment from there. Toshow what is meant by this, the second cameo from Chapter 1 is considered in termsof children’s learning and assessment. In Cameo 2, the children are analysing threedifferent source types for jobs and language of time. Thus they are selecting evidencefrom a range of source types, investigating and interpreting it and presenting theirunderstanding in the written accounts of a day in the life of a housemaid. There isalso imaginative engagement and reconstruction of the past in the storytelling, freezeframes and singing activities. In this example of teaching, there is more emphasis onenquiry and interpretation of evidence. It is possible to cross-reference these learningoutcomes to the key elements which form the basis of the level descriptors. However,for formative assessment one could use a grid devised from the ‘Map of History’ (seeChapter 2).

Using such a grid, one can identify which aspects of history a lesson or series oflessons involves, then make a record for individual children. For example, a lessonmight give experience in historical enquiry, reasoning and hypothesising. Anotherlesson might give comparing and contrasting tasks as a way of teaching about changeand continuity. A set of drawings of artefacts would yield evidence of children’s obser-vational skills. Generating questions about a topic and classifying them into differenttypes of question would show some achievement in the process of questioning.

Carrying out assessment

There are generic methods of assessment which may be used across all subjects. Mostbooks for primary schoolteachers will give some account of these: observation ofchildren; listening to what children say; examining what they write; giving texts andquizzes, for example. This section focuses on a selection of those methods which canbe particularly useful in history. It is not intended to be fully comprehensive, sincemuch more research needs to be done into children’s historical learning. It also has astrong emphasis on pragmatic realism and recognises the truism that much assess-ment knowledge is carried in teachers’ minds: they simply do not have time to writeit all down for all subjects right across the curriculum.

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● Oral: When children are reporting back in pairs following a storytelling, orindividually during a drama, listen to their contributions and make a note ofwhich pairs are drawing on historical understanding and a sense of period andwhich pairs do not seem to understand the past context so well.

● Written work: One’s exact assessment purposes will vary in accordance withthe demands of each written task, but, by using the map of history framework,one can assess individual children’s knowledge skills and understanding. Forexample, using the pieces on the day in the life of a Victorian housemaid, onecan look for evidence of selecting from the three sources, interpretation, draw-ing conclusions and imaginative response to the historical situation. One canalso look for the understanding that they are dealing with different kinds ofevidence from the past.

● Presentation of historical processes in a variety of forms: drama, freezeframes, songs, board games, drawing, sketches, maps, plans, decisions in sim-ulations. There are many more outcomes of children doing history than oraland written work. Through the accuracy of a child’s drawing one can assess ob-servation skills; through the plans for a castle, a child’s understanding of theconcept of ‘castle’. Focus should always be on the learning outcome of that les-son; so that if, for example, one was trying to teach a concept of ‘hierarchy’, onewould look for evidence of having learned about different levels of society. Aseries of freeze frames telling a historical story in assembly is material for as-sessment as much as a piece of written work.

● Tape-recording what children think they have learned from a lesson, describedearlier in this chapter: This can be very valuable as a means of gaining directaccess to children’s own perceptions of their learning. It can give teachersinsights into both intended and unintended learning outcomes!

● Using writing frames (e.g. Wray and Lewis, 1997) for children to record in theirown words what they have learned from a topic: There is not space to go intowriting frames in much depth, but they should be familiar to most primaryteachers through the materials for the National Literacy Strategy. An explanationframe could be used for children to record their understandings of the reasonsfor an event. A comparison frame may be used for past and present. The framesare excellent for gaining access to children’s understandings in a way that chil-dren’s history books full of comprehension and cloze exercises, fruits of internetsearches, and copied sections from CD-ROMs or topic books will never do.

● Drama for assessment: Children could be asked in pairs or groups to devise ashort scene showing the meaning of a concept such as authority or power.

Methods of assessment

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Most of these suggested forms of assessment can be built into one’s teaching as anintegral part of it. For example, tape-recording each child stating what he or she haslearned can be a plenary session at the end of a lesson or a series of lessons. Theknowledge gained from assessment can be used formatively to ‘feed forward’ tochildren what they need to do next, or how to improve their work. For example, totake questioning again, for children who always generate ‘trivia’-type questions,activities on devising and sorting questions can be built into most topics. One couldtake the Nichol framework of question types shown in Chapter 11 and share itexplicitly with children, so that they have some understanding of different types ofquestions. The important point about assessment in history is that most of it shouldbe formative and integral to teaching, moving the teaching and the children’s learn-ing forward. Moving children’s learning forward should be one’s central concern withall the issues addressed in this chapter, which has dealt with some of the thornierareas of history teaching in the primary school and offered some solutions for dealingwith these aspects.

● Self-assessment: Children can compile lists of ‘I can do’ statements (e.g. ‘I candevise historical questions which lead to a worthwhile enquiry’) against whichto assess their own performance. Such a statement could be the learningobjective shared with the children during the lesson.

● Concept webs done at the beginning and end of a topic can be a valuable formof assessment.

This book has introduced a particular view of creative teaching of history in theprimary school. It has presented: a concept of creativity and of creative teaching;definitions of history; concepts of learning and teaching; and a wide pedagogicalrepertoire for teaching history. There are many different teaching approaches andactivities, and some examples of short-term planning (i.e. individual lesson plans)to serve as models for teachers writing their own plans. One purpose of this chapteris to pull those strands together in a medium-term plan. It deals with the problemfor beginning teachers of how to weave together a series of lessons which make acoherent whole as a scheme of work, yet which meet the requirements of the NationalCurriculum, the needs of the children and the context in which they are working. Thischapter presents: an example of teaching part of one of the compulsory units of studyat Key Stage 2; an extended rationale and justification for teaching in that way; andan illustration of the repertoire of the teacher. The second purpose of the chapter is torelate this way of planning and teaching history to notions of creativity.

An example of teaching the Romans in Britain (NC KS2 Unit 9)

The context

This was a Year 5 class in a multicultural school in north-west London. The lessonsdescribed below occupied the whole of one afternoon a week for three weeks.

The planning

The statutory requirements of the History National Curriculum are broadly an out-line study of invaders and settlers pre-Norman Conquest and an in-depth study of oneof three settling peoples. Thus the scope of what may be studied is very broad. Thereare also suggestions (in grey ink) in the curriculum document from which teacherscan select. I chose the effects of Roman settlement: the Roman Conquest and occu-pation of Britain; Boudicca and resistance to Roman rule; and outline knowledgeabout the Romans as a background to understanding their impact on the British.

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CHAPTER 13

Putting it all togetherPlanning and creativity

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rThere was also some subject integration with literacy. The lessons are presented inthis instance as a narrative account of what I did, rather than as formal lesson plans.

The teaching

Lesson 1

I organised the class with the children seated at their tables and all looking towardsthe front of the room. I put on the overhead projector a picture of a Roman galley. Ithen asked the children what kind of ship they thought it might be, pointing out thebattering-ram at the bows of the ship. They thought it was some kind of warship. Istated that our question this week was: ‘How did the Romans invade Britain withthese ships?’ I asked them how it was powered and the response was: by oars. I askedthe children to count the oars they could see on the side of the ship facing them and Iasked how many men to each oar. They thought the oars would be big and heavy andwould require two men. I suggested with their help that each pair of men might needa metre of space in which to row, and by counting the oars on one side of the ship wetried to work out the length of the ship. I had a metre rule to show the concept of ametre and I asked for several sensible volunteers to come and stand down the side ofthe classroom in role as galley slaves. Using the metre rule I demarcated a metre spacebetween each child. They enjoyed this phase of the lesson. There were 24 oars on eachside of the ship; through questioning we established that there would have been96 oarsmen or slaves, 48 to each side of the ship, and other crew in charge of them.The ship would have been between 30 and 35 metres long.

I asked next how they thought the oarsmen would keep in time. One childsuggested a drum. We did not have a drum available for the class at that time, but Ihad a tambour with a drumstick ready. I demonstrated a steady beat, and asked whatthey might do if they saw an enemy warship. ‘Row faster!’ was the response. I did thisand then asked what if the ship was approaching land. They thought the men wouldrow more slowly as they came towards a beach. I demonstrated this too. I suggestedthat as well as the drummer there might have been a captain of the galley slaves,whipping those who did not row fast enough or keep in time. This heralded a moveinto more of a storytelling role for me as the teacher. I asked them to pretend theywere Celts, and to imagine what they would do if they saw a fleet of Roman galleysapproaching the shore where they were standing. What would they do? A childsuggested they might scream with fear or shout loudly. I told them we would try thisout: a tiny bit of drama in among the story, discussion and instruction. I counted tothree and we all shouted very loudly. This generated a very positive, happy responsefrom the children. I told them that we would go outside and ‘draw’ the ship on theplayground: they would be in role as galley slaves. The children were excited, but, asinstructed, behaved well on threat of abandoning this part of the lesson.

We moved outside with the teacher bringing a trundle wheel to measure the sidesof the ship, and myself bringing the metre rule and tambour. Once outside I lined the

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m children up at what would be the rear of the vessel, ready to select children asmarkers for the length and breadth of the ship. This proved to be a mistake andit would have been better to have the children waiting at the ‘side’ of the vessel, forit was a windy day and hard to make myself heard as I moved further and furtheraway, plotting markers. None the less they were well behaved as I selected a child foreach side of the ‘ship’. The children were silent, gazing at the sheer size of the shipshown by the children as markers. I asked a girl to play the drum, and another girlto be captain. The last role, that of the man with the whip, I gave to a rather ebullientboy (a mistake) but he did get well into role, rushing up and down the central imagi-nary ‘walkway’ in the centre of the ship, making whipping motions and exhortinghis slaves.

I moved into storytelling mode. I told the children they were rowing from Gaul toinvade England for all the goods and treasure there. They needed to row steadily. Atone stage they thought they saw an enemy ship, so the drummer increased her speedand the rowers did too. Then I told them they were coming in to land and had to gomore slowly. The drummer and the rowers slowed down their actions. I told them theCelts were waiting on the beach armed to the teeth, and we did the war-cry we hadrehearsed in the classroom. I picked one boy to act as standard-bearer and told themthat when he leapt into the water, they all had to follow him for the honour of Rome.They leapt off the ‘ship’ and fought the imaginary Celts. I let this go on for a fewmoments, then called them back to the ship and home to Gaul. I asked the drummerto beat hard as they pulled away; then steadily as they rowed back. I ended this phaseof the lesson by thanking the children for their superb work and lining them up to goback inside the school.

Once the children were seated, I showed them an overhead transparency of thefront page of the Greek Gazette, a kind of tabloid newspaper published by UsborneBooks as part of a series of tabloid newspapers for ‘olden times’. These books arehighly recommended for a variety of teaching purposes, but in this case I wanted toteach the concept of a front-page story with headlines, subheadings, columns, eyewit-ness accounts, quotations and interesting detail. I deliberately did not use The Roman

Record, the book actually produced by Usborne, since part of my medium-term planwas for these children to produce their own Roman tabloid newspaper with a titlechosen by themselves. Through question and answer, we examined the front-pagestory, read it aloud and discussed its elements. I set the task of writing a headline forthe invasion of Britain we had just acted out; their homework was to write the news-paper article and illustrate it. An example of a child’s work may be seen in Figure 13.1.

Lesson 2

Having caught the children’s attention and interest in the Romans with the galleylesson, I wanted them to have some outline or background knowledge of the Romansagainst which to set the invasion story. I proposed to do this through a lesson that fellinto two segments.

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rFigure 13.1 Children’s work:The Romans invade Britain!

I started by collecting the children’s homework on the newspaper articles from theprevious week and praising them for their efforts. I showed two or three whichcaught my eye as being particularly well laid out and presented in proper tabloidformat and style.

I said that our question this week was what were the Romans like and we weregoing to find out by using topic books. Each child had a card on which I asked themto write a question about the Romans. I gave each child three cards of a different

colour and 10 minutes to go through the topic books on their desks (each table hadabout five or six books). I modelled the process of finding interesting facts about theRomans by looking through one of the books and reading my fact aloud (e.g. ‘If a slaveran away he or she could be whipped or thrown to the lions’). They were to write onefact on each card to be shared with the whole class. I asked the slower readers to doone card and helped them with finding their facts.

I then called the class together and went around the class with each child readingout a question and a fact. In this way we pooled a great deal of information about theRomans, including schooling, slaves, towns, villas, food and drink. I then showedthem a series of topic headings like the ones just given on larger cards, and told themwe were going to sort our information under those headings. I placed the cards atspecific points around the classroom, and gave the children five minutes to place theircards with the relevant topic heading. I then asked them to go around again with theirjotters, collecting one fact, not necessarily their own, from each topic heading ‘station’.The children were mostly engaged during this task but there was some off-taskactivity and silly behaviour from some of the boys with literacy difficulties, perhapsbecause of the demands of the task. The next activity planned was to make a conceptweb of what the children had found out. I modelled on the whiteboard how to makea concept web and gave them 10 minutes to try making their own. (See Figure 12.1 foran example of a concept web.)

I moved on to the second segment of the lesson and showed them an overheadtransparency of several advertisements from the Greek Gazette. These advertisementsserve the dual purpose of communicating much information about, for example,Greek times, and being very humorous as well. The children responded well to theseadvertisements, laughing at the funny parts and being very interested and engaged.We examined several, looking at different fonts and illustrations, the register of thelanguage and the genre of persuading the reader to buy something (DfEE, 1998, Year4, Term 3). Their homework this week, which they started in the lesson, was to designtheir own advertisement to go in the Roman newspaper we were aiming to create. Anexample of a child’s work is given in Figure 13.2.

Lesson 3

For this lesson I wanted the children to have a deep and rich understanding of whatit felt like to be the Celts under Roman rule, and the reasons for the Boudicca rebel-lion. I decided to approach this through storytelling and drama. A detailed account ofthis lesson is also given in Turner-Bisset (2001). One immediate problem was theclassroom context. With the children sitting in groups, their attention might wanderto the other children with whom they were making eye contact and I wanted all eyesto be on me. They would have to swivel their chairs to see me. The carpet was a pos-sibility but these were Year 5 children and quite big. They would have been squashedand uncomfortable, and I would not have been able to move around freely. With theteacher’s permission, we spent the first few minutes rearranging the classroom

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with the desks stacked at the sides and the chairs in a large circle. I was now readyto begin.

I told them the story of Boudicca and the events leading up to the rebellion. I hadread several accounts of the story of Boudicca, including:

Figure 13.2 Children’s work:Advert for Roman newspaper

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To create my story I used careful editing: for example, even though the rape ofBoudicca’s two teenage daughters is crucial to the outcome, since these were primaryaged children, I did not include it, concentrating instead on the flogging and humilia-tion of Boudicca herself. (For accounts of how to create stories for the classroomplease see Chapter 7.)

I stopped my story at the point at which Prasutagus has died, the Romans haverecalled the loan to the Iceni tribe and the tribe, led by Boudicca, has to make adecision about what to do next. I told them we were going to act out the fullemergency council meeting of the Iceni tribe, that everyone was to be in role, theycould choose to say as much or as little as they wished or nothing at all, and that wewould spend a few moments allocating roles. I had ready a set of role-cards: somewith large roles such as Boudicca and her royal daughters, several council elders, apoet who tended to make off-the-wall comments but who sometimes spoke greatsense (this idea from Sutcliffe’s book), and the rest ordinary tribe members. Thosekeen to speak could put up their hands for the larger roles. Most of the children werekeen to take a major role. One boy, Aaron, who had been very silly the previous weekpossibly because of the literacy demands of the concept web task, begged to beallowed to play Boudicca. I gave him the opportunity, and awarded the role of seniorelder to Sophie, a girl with literacy difficulties.

I was in role as chief elder. I explained that I would knock on the table three timesas a signal for the council meeting to begin; the same signal would end the drama. Iwould start the meeting by explaining the crisis situation we were in and inviteBoudicca, her daughters and all the elders to speak in turn. Boudicca and I wouldshare the chairing of the meeting. This in fact happened, for as the meeting went on,Aaron in role as Boudicca gained more and more confidence, and ran the meetingvery impressively. Sophie showed that she excelled at speaking and listening, andmade one or two sensible suggestions. The crux of the problem we were addressingwas how to repay the loan to Seneca and avoid trouble with the Romans. The childrenwere not grounded in the historical detail of the time, but they did pick up on infor-mation such as the Iceni being rich in horses and minerals, so they suggested sellingthese to raise money to pay off the loan. In fact many of their suggestions focused onfund-raising (the teacher later explained to me that many of these children sat on theschool council, and fund-raising was a perennial concern). Once the children hadstarted to repeat ideas, I gave the signal to end the drama and two minutes to relax

● three or four accounts from children’s topic books;

● accounts from Roman historians Tacitus and Dio;

● a book aimed at Key Stage 3 by Downton et al. (1979);

● Rosemary Sutcliffe’s historical novel Song for a Dark Queen (1978).

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rand come out of role. I knocked again for silence, and told them the rest of theBoudicca story, to her defeat and death.

I gave the order to put the chairs and tables back. While the children were doingthis, I wrote the names of key characters on the whiteboard to assist with spelling.When the children were seated, I explained they were to write an article for theirRoman tabloid newspaper on the Boudicca story, either as an eyewitness, a characterin the story, or simply in the third person as a journalist reporting on events. We readthrough the spellings of key names on the board to familiarise the children withdifficult names and I asked the children to suggest headlines again. As before thechildren finished the work for homework. An example of children’s work is includedin Figure 13.3. It is significant that with one storytelling and the drama, the childrenwere able to write at length about the story. They had no recourse to any secondarysources such as topic books or videos: the writing arose purely from the storytellingand the drama activity. The power of story and drama to generate deep learning hasbeen explored in this book; the children’s work here is yet another example of theirimpact on children’s learning.

Rationale and justification

Lesson 1

Some readers will recognise the first lesson as a replication of David (Turner-Bisset,2001) creating a Roman galley. I described this lesson as an example of expert teachingas a starting point for that book. Enthused and inspired by the lesson, I wished to tryit out for myself. Teachers are interested in what works: what kinds of teachingapproaches, activities, examples, discourse and feedback encourage children to learn?In observing David, I was struck by the engagement of the children, their learning, thevariety of roles and approaches, and the evident enjoyment of all. I wanted to try thislesson for myself to see if it worked as well for a different teacher in a different context.

Rather than a formal lesson plan, I had an agenda of activities and questioningthrough which I intended to move the children. In the list of activities and approachesused which follows, the chapter in which that teaching approach is discussed is givenin parentheses:

● Showing the picture of the galley (Chapter 5).

● Socratic dialogue in which we established the possible size of the ship and howit was powered (Chapter 11).

● The physical representation of part of the ship in the classroom (Chapters 8and 9).

● Modelling drumming to set the speed (Chapter 13).

● Storytelling of the Roman invasion (Chapter 7).

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Creative Teaching: History in the Primary Curriculum

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Figure 13.3 Children’s work: Boudicca story

● Creating the outline of the ship in the playground (Chapters 8 and 9).

● Further storytelling and the significance of the standard-bearer (Chapters 7and 8).

● Acting out the battle between the Romans and Celts (Chapter 8).

● Looking at the front page of the Greek Gazette (Chapter 13).

● Starting to write headlines and news stories of the invasion of Britain(Chapter 13).

The initial activity of looking at the picture is a powerful way of seizing the children’sattention and interest. The overhead projector is an important teaching tool. Itsadvantage is the size of the image projected. It is an immediate focus for the children’sattention. In this part of the lesson I wanted the children to estimate for themselvesthe size of the ship, guided by my questions and challenges, using the evidence of thepicture of the ship.

The physical creation of part of the ship in the classroom was an importantprecursor to the later full reconstruction in the playground. It acted as an enactiverepresentation of the ship (Bruner, 1970), since, by using children as markers, theclass could see how much room just seven oarsmen would occupy. For those learnerswho find it difficult to understand ideas or concepts through being told, or readingwords on a page, acting out through physical movement or positioning can greatlyaid understanding of complex concepts. Storytelling is another crucially importantteaching approach and has a whole chapter devoted to it (Chapter 7). In this lesson, itbecame a thread running through which carried the meaning of important conceptssuch as invasion, galley and standard-bearer. It also captured the children’s imagina-tion and helped to hold their interest. Acting out the invasion battle was a dramaactivity which flowed naturally from the storytelling and was again an enactiverepresentation of an event in the past.

Two of the activities – the drumming and looking at the example of the Greek

Gazette front page – involved demonstration and modelling of the drumming sothat any child I chose later to be the drummer would be able to do it; to speed up andslow down as required. As a class we also modelled the battle-cry which would beused in the drama. For the newspaper stories, the children needed a good example,but not one too close to what I wanted them to write. They needed examples oflayout, headlines, subheadings, columns, quotations, and the appropriate style, toneand register of a tabloid newspaper. They also needed an example of an ‘ancient’tabloid newspaper to serve as a model for the end-product (in tangible terms) of theunit. The writing task was something of a settling or winding down activity at the endof an afternoon which had involved much varied activity. It served as a consolidationtask for the afternoon’s work, and as a means for myself and the teacher to assessthe children’s learning and understanding of ideas about the Roman invasion andRoman ships.

Lesson 2

My agenda for lesson 2 looked like this:

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● Topic book blitz using demonstration and modelling (Chapter 12).

● Concept web activity (Chapter 12).

● Writing Roman adverts for newspaper (Chapter 13) (knowledge transfer again).

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rIt is all too easy to take for granted that children will have background knowledgeof the period of history or the topic one intends to teach. Background knowledge mayvary enormously from child to child, from the child who knows nothing, to the onesitting next to him who has read several ‘Horrible Histories’ including one on theperiod you are teaching. I chose to do a combination of a topic book blitz and makingconcept webs for this class. The sorting of facts under broader headings is an exercisein classifying information. The facts about fish stew, dormice and wine shops arephysically grouped under the heading of food and drink. The physical sorting, withmoving around the room, is both an enactive representation of sorting facts in themind, and a respite from sitting still to read and write. The revisiting of each topicheading to collect facts for the concept web serves to reinforce the information. Theactivity is a collective pooling of information. The final part of making the conceptweb is another means of revising and sorting facts, this time in a visual or iconicrepresentation (Bruner, 1970). Concept webs may be used in a variety of subjects:their use in history is discussed further in Chapter 12.

The second part of the lesson on designing advertisements for the Roman newspa-pers as stated previously had the purpose of communicating information about theRomans and enjoying humour. The advertisements in the example newspaper wereinteresting, amusing and varied. They offered a great deal of information aboutaspects of Greek life. It is probably true that if one wants to learn about a culture,advertisements for products and services can tell you a great deal about that culture.I wanted now for the children to use their background information in order toproduce advertisements. Through doing so, their background knowledge would berevisited and enhanced through working actively on the information to produce it inanother form: from information text to persuasion genre (Lewis and Wray, 1995).This part of the lesson carried the secondary purpose of literacy hour work (DfEE,1998, Year 4, Term 3, p. 43). Finally the activity of designing the advertisements wasintended to encourage creativity in the synthesis of different elements to producetheir own new texts (Koestler, 1964).

Lesson 3

Here is the agenda for this lesson:

● Telling the story of Boudicca’s rebellion (Chapter 7).

● Acting out the Iceni tribe council meeting (Chapter 8).

● Writing out the story of Boudicca (Chapter 7).

For the third lesson I wanted a change of teaching approach and much more empha-sis on storytelling and drama. The rationale for this was simply the power and impactof these approaches. In my teaching I have been greatly influenced by the work of the

late John Fines. In his teaching there was often a fine line between storytelling anddrama, an interface which has been explored in this book (Chapters 7 and 8). I hadbeen very much impressed by his storytelling and by the imaginative response of thechildren. He frequently used the story as a springboard to other activities, and this Iwanted to try here. The proof of the teaching, so to speak, and the children’s learningwould lie in their imaginative oral responses during the drama and in their writtenwork. The physical layout of the classroom was important. It is worth getting thisright in order to create the right atmosphere. The time taken to move furniturearound is well compensated for by the ease with which one can undertake storytellingand drama and the quality of the children’s work which ensues.

The device of telling a story up to a certain point and moving into drama increasesthe involvement of the children, which is far from passive during the telling. I find ituseful to set ground rules for the drama (e.g. only one person to speak at once) and tohave ready a number of small cards with the roles printed on them. Each child, evenif she or he ends up with a very small part or a non-speaking role, has a clearly definedrole. In some cases I allow preparation time, but in this case none was required for thestructure of the council meeting, which I also explained lent a formality and order tothe drama. The two-minute recovery period was necessary to give the children timeto relax and come out of role. I wanted the desks moved back, since, once I had toldthe rest of the story, I wanted the children to begin writing immediately while thestory was still fresh in their minds. Through the act of retelling in written form,the children add their own interpretation, pick up on details which caught theirimagination, and probe aspects of character which may not have been in the originaltelling or version. The act of retelling in oral or written form helps children to makethe story their own, part of their own internal map of understanding these events(see Chapter 2). That the lesson’s aims were successful is borne out by the quality ofthe children’s writing (see Figure 13.3). It has to be remembered that these pieces ofwriting were produced only from the storytelling and the drama: no other writtensources were used. The teacher, Kirsty, was astonished to find that so many of themwere able to write so well without other support. I would suggest as a hypothesisthat it was their imaginative engagement with the events of the past which enabledthem to do so.

The repertoire of the teacher

Many of you reading this book will be beginning teachers. I suspect that one reactionto the accounts of these lessons and the rationale might be that this kind of teaching isall very well for experienced teachers, but too difficult or risky for those setting out onthe journey of learning to teach. Quite rightly, at the beginning, one tends to want nice‘safe’ activities, which don’t permit too much movement out of seats or carry with themthe possibility of disorder, or worse, mayhem. Order and classroom management aremajor concerns of beginning teachers. I would argue that being able to use such active

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teaching approaches is an essential part of a teacher’s pedagogical repertoire. It is ofcentral importance to provide learning experiences which allow all children to learn.The strongest argument in favour of the approaches described here is that in termsof children’s learning they work extremely well. Since children’s learning is our majorobjective as teachers, we have to be open to the idea that a wide range of pedagogicalapproaches, strategies and activities is necessary to promote that learning. You will findthat the response of the children will be so positive and inspiring that it will encourageyou to do more of this sort of teaching and wipe away any doubts you may have.

By way of example, I gave one of my student-teachers a copy of the transcript ofDavid’s original lesson on the Roman galley which I later wrote in full in Turner-Bisset(2001). She was so inspired by this that she resolved to try it herself on her second yearteaching placement. The interesting point was that she took the central idea of theteaching approach, creating a boat in the playground, and adapted it to the context inwhich she was teaching. This was a tough primary school on a deprived housing estatein a ‘new’ town in south-east England. She had one of two parallel Year 3 classes.Her class contained several ‘problem’ children including twin girls, both electivemutes. The normal teaching approach adopted by the class teacher and her colleagueplanning in tandem was to watch a video and then give the class a set of writtenquestions. This particular student felt able to go against the constraints and trysomething different. Her own class teacher would not have tried the mapping out ofthe ship in the playground, but she was happy to allow the student-teacher to do so.I was privileged to observe the lesson as part of a research project.

The student, Kathy, did use the video prescribed for the week, which was about theVikings and their ships, their invasion of and settlement in Britain and other parts ofthe world, and their rowing up the Thames in their attempt to take London. The classwatched the video and Kathy gave them each a strip of paper with the same three ques-tions about the ship and what happened when the Vikings reached London Bridge.She then replicated part of David’s lesson of working out how much space each oars-man would have to sit in, using children as markers in the classroom, and modellingthe drumming. The class then moved outside with chalk, metre rules and the drum.They were very well behaved as she drew the ship in chalk on the playground, andonce in position as oarsmen and markers, they rowed as if their lives depended on it.She moved into role as storyteller, letting them know they were approaching LondonBridge. At the last minute, they ‘saw’ Anglo-Saxon soldiers on the bridge. ‘Hold back!’she cried and these Year 3 children tried frantically to ‘row’ backwards, rather thanslow the ‘boat’ by simply dipping their ‘oars’ in and holding hard. They were evidentlydeeply absorbed in the story and drama, even the two girls who never spoke. Duringthis activity, children from other classes near the playground were watching from theirclassrooms. They asked their teachers when they could play with the chalk outline ofthe ship. The weather remained dry for the rest of the week and at every playtime,groups of children from across the school could be seen using it for their imaginativeplay. This was an unintended but none the less valuable learning outcome.

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The significant points about this example of teaching are the replication and adap-tation to another period in history, another culture from the past, and for a differentteaching context. It matters not that someone has used the approach before, or that onemight be ‘stealing’ another person’s idea. Through the act of adaptation to their ownteaching circumstances, teachers can make an approach or an activity entirely theirown. These concepts of replication and adaptation are important to the design andpurpose of this book, and to its central conception of creativity explored at length inChapter 1. In this example Kathy was teaching creatively, despite having takenan idea from somewhere else. She replicated the activity but adapted it for her owncontext, bringing the frame of reference of the Viking invasion and the rammingof London Bridge to the acquired teaching activity of planning out a ship in theplayground. Both Kathy and I were eager and enthusiastic to emulate David’s terrificlesson, and these emotions are part of the product of creativity. In Chapter 1, followingKoestler, I suggested there was a ‘rush’ of emotion accompanying the moment ofcreation. For the jester part of the Triptych, the emotion is laughter; for the artist, theemotion is wonder or admiration. This is an explosion of emotions which accompaniesthe moment of connection. Certainly when I have ‘seen’ how I can use a teachingapproach or a representation to teach someone something, I have been aware ofexcitement and a feeling of pleasurable anticipation at the prospect of trying it out.

Planning and creativity

It follows that planning for creative teaching can be very pleasurable. It is more usualto conceive of planning as work, but I would argue that in this kind of planning whichproduces creative teaching there is the kind of pleasure which accompanies any cre-ative activity. I am not thinking here so much of the documentation and recording ofplanning but of the thinking. When one muses over a range of teaching approaches(e.g. storytelling, drama, music, simulation, pictures or documents) to select teachingactivities, one is making connections between the material to be taught and the kindof teaching approaches one might use. In addition, one selects the teaching approachfor a particular class of children in a particular context. It is a synthesis, a shuffling ofideas and repertoire to devise the best possible teaching approach for what is to belearned by this group of learners. It follows that the ‘teaching approach’ should ideallyfeature on medium-term plans, so that one can see at a glance whether or not one ismixing one’s approaches to give the children a varied diet of learning experiences.A further notion I would like to introduce is the rather heretical idea that one shouldnot over-plan, or plan too far in advance. Dean (1995) suggests that it is not worthplanning in detail for more than the first few lessons. ‘A rolling programme of weeklyreview and further planning is more flexible, and allows you to adapt to newdevelopments and changing interests’ (Dean, 1995, p. 18). Figure 13.4 shows themedium-term plan for teaching the Romans in Britain in this chapter. Like the lessonplans in this book, it offers a good model for medium-term planning, including

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Putting it all together

Key Question:What happened when the Romans invaded Britain?

Week Concepts Skills Processes Activities/ Assessment N.C. links Subject

Approaches links

Week 1 Galley Observation Enquiry Visual image Understanding of N.C. 2a, 2c Literacy

Invasion Estimation Interpretation Modelling concepts N.C. 3 Drama

Ram Visualisation Imagination Storytelling Understanding and N.C. 4a, 4b

Slaves Mime Planning spaces recall of content N.C. 5a, 5b

Standard- Expressive Drama Use of imagination N.C. 9

bearer movement Writing Through oral

Headline newspaper contributions, how

Subheading article they did the drama,

Eyewitness and the written work

Week 2 Concept web Extracting facts Visiting and Topic book blitz From their ability N.C. 2a, 2c Literacy

Army Skimming revisiting Organising facts to note, collect, record N.C. 3 Art

Roads Scanning information Concept webs and organise facts N.C. 4a, 4b Design

Food Recording Mapping Modelling adverts From making N.C. 5a, 5b technology

Entertainment information information Writing adverts concept webs N.C. 9

Gladiators Sorting Grouping facts From content

Town life information under concept of adverts

Home life headings

Week 3 Loan Listening to story Imagination Storytelling From listening and N.C. 2a, 2c Literacy

Royal line Taking on a role interpretation Drama/role-play responding to story N.C. 3 Art

Rebellion Acting out Writing story From role-play and N.C. 4a Drama

Council meeting Drawing Boudicca writing N.C. 5a, 5b

meeting Recalling story from descriptions N.C. 9

Writing story

Figure 13.4 Medium-term plan for teaching the Romans in Britain

important aspects such as teaching approaches which are often left out. At the end ofthese three weeks, one would review the work the children had done and plan thenext few weeks.

Conclusion

There are several reasons why it is important that teachers should be creative. First ofall, teaching is creative in that it is a creative act in which one selects from one’s reper-toire of teaching approaches activities which are useful for teaching skills, conceptsand processes for particular groups of learners in a range of contexts. Second, thisplanning for teaching is enjoyable, creative behaviour to ensure that every child hasthe opportunity to connect to the knowledge, skills and understanding of the teacher.The moment of creativity happens when a teacher decides to teach content andprocesses by a particular approach: Henry VIII’s wives as a ‘Blind Date’ programme;history as a detective puzzle at Key Stage 1; Florence Nightingale – ‘This is your Life’;the Ancient Greeks as an invasion and settlement game; or the lives of sailors at seathrough a selection of sea songs and shanties. Such planning is a world apart fromplanning for curriculum’coverage’ and can be very pleasurable. Since teaching is a jobwith a strong element of altruism, any aspect of the job which has benefits for theteacher can only be a good thing. Teachers who enjoy their work are more likely tocreate high-quality lessons for their children. There is of course the issue of whetheror not teachers should be teaching creatively, or seeking to encourage creativity inchildren. I would argue that through creative teaching, one is modelling creativeactivity to children and thus encouraging and facilitating creativity in them. Theinspiration and enthusiasm which accompany creative teaching are experienced bythe children as well as the teacher.

There are some implications of this way of conceiving of teaching as a creativeactivity. Teachers need time to create stories for telling, role-play and drama, games andsimulations. It is a kind of ‘capital investment’ which, once made, yields tremendousenhancement of children’s learning. This makes the initial investment of time andenergy worthwhile. Staff development time and in-service training could usefully beallocated to this kind of preparation and development of teaching activities, ratherthan the kind of ring-binder-led approach which has characterised some literacy andnumeracy training. These folders, full of bullet points and advice, are helpful as far asthey go, but they do not go far enough in terms of modelling and explaining how onemight teach creatively and in a way which enhances children’s learning. In contrast,this book has set out to provide both a wealth of practical examples, and access to thethinking behind them.

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Simulation: Cortez and the Conquest of the Aztecs

Spanish: Round 1

You are Cortez, leader of the Spanish expedition sent by Velasquez, Governer of Cuba,to explore, trade and search for Christian captives in Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico.You hear rumours that Velasquez thinks you are too ambitious and plans to have youremoved from the expedition.

Do you:

1. Carry on getting your ships ready and not worry about Velasquez?

2. Cut short your preparations and sail for Yucatan?

Aztecs: Round 1

You are Montezuma, ruler of the great Aztec empire, composed of several differenttribes. You hear stories of many signs and omens that the god Quetzelcoatl is return-ing to take back the empire from you. A mountain has been seen moving on thewaters of the Gulf: a Spanish ship. You believe that the white men are signs that thegod Quetzelcoatl has come back.

Do you:

3. Send supplies of food and presents to the Spanish?

4. Send a small army to deal with the Spanish invaders?

Consequences sheet: Round 1

Spanish Aztec

1 3 Cortez: You have to deal with a group of soldiers who come to removeyou from the ships. This delays you and you lose some men, but youset off.Montezuma: Because you do not attack the Spanish, you weaken yourposition for the future.Spanish lose 10 men; Aztecs lose 5,000.

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m 1 4 Cortez: You have to deal with a group of soldiers who come to remove youfrom the ships. This delays you and you lose some men, but you set off.Montezuma: Your army attacks the Spanish port of Veracruz and killssome of the Spanish force.Spanish lose 25 men; Aztecs lose 5.

2 3 Cortez: you sail away early with your eleven ships and avoid Velasquez’men.Montezuma: Because you do not attack the Spanish, you waken yourposition for the future.Spanish lose 0 men; Aztecs lose 5,000.

2 4 Cortez: you sail away early with your eleven ships and avoid Velasquez’men.Montezuma: Your army attacks the Spanish port of Veracruz and killssome of the Spanish force.Spanish lose 2 men; Aztecs lose 5.

Spanish: Round 2

Cortez: You learn that some of the vassal kings of the empire are ready to rebel againstMontezuma. You could march from the coast to Tenochtitlan with the rebel tribes andattack Montezuma. Your troops do not want to march. Food is short and they are tornbetween their desire for fame and wealth and their fear of defeat and death. Theywant to sail back to Cuba.

5. You listen to your troops and wait until they have enough food and morepromises of help from the rebels.

6. You sink all your eleven ships, so that there is no retreat and they must marchon Montezuma.

Aztecs: Round 2

Montezuma: You hear that rebel tribes are marching on Tenochtitlan with the Spanish.Paralysised by indecision (a problem of yours) you seek help from your priests andadvisers again.

Do you:

7. Send forces to harass the Spanish on their long march?

8. Thinking the god has returned, prepare a lavish reception to welcome theSpanish as friends and allies?

Consequences sheet: Round 2

Spanish Aztec

5 7 Cortez: Some of your soldiers sail away in one ship. This delays thestart of the march but the Aztec soldiers do not reach you.

Montezuma: some of your soldiers fight with rebel tribes and are killed.Spanish lose 50 men; Aztecs lose 100.

5 8 Cortez: Some of your soldiers sail away in one ship. This delays thestart of the march but the Aztec soldiers do not reach you.Montezuma: some of your troops from the other tribes, Cempoalansand Tlaxcatans go over to the Spanish side.Spanish lose 50 men; Aztecs lose 5,000.

6 7 Cortez: you lead all your troops on the march to Tenochtitlan, recruitingas many native allies as possible who are hostile to Montezuma.Montezuma: You hear of the massacre of the local nobility at Cholulaby the Spanish and begin to think they must be the gods.Spanish lose 0 men; Aztecs lose 100.

6 8 Cortez: you lead all your troops on the march to Tenochtitlan, recruitingas many native allies as possible who are hostile to Montezuma.Montezuma: some of your troops from the other tribes, Cempoalansand Tlaxcatans go over to the Spanish side.Spanish lose 0 men; Aztecs lose 5,000.

Spanish: Round 3

Cortez’s procession of his soldiers and Montezuma’s procession of the great noblesand priests are about to meet on the causeway to Tenochtitlan: a historic moment.

Cortez:

Do you:

9. Immediately attack Montezuma and proclaim you are the god?

10. Greet Montezuma in peace and wait for a suitable moment to attack laterduring the feast of Huitzilopochli, where you might be able to kill as manyas 10,000 Aztecs?

Aztecs: Round 3

Montezuma:

Do you:

11. Greet Cortez in peace as the returned god, welcome him with gifts and givehim and his men palaces to live in?

12. Seeing the number of rebel troops with him, order your soldiers to seize theSpanish and keep them hostage?

Consequences sheet: Round 3

Spanish Aztec

9 11 Cortez: Montezuma is too well-guarded and the men you ordered toattack are killed.

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Montezuma: You have been expecting this and signal your guards tokill the men who attack. However, you are still afraid that Cortez mightbe a god and do not order him taken.Spanish lose 25 men; Aztecs lose 0.

9 12 Cortez: Montezuma is too well-guarded and the men you ordered toattack are killed. Many more are taken prisoner. You have to plot tobreak out of prison and attack the Aztecs before you are sent forhuman sacrifice.Montezuma: You feel safer now Cortez is captured. Cortez may bea god and you will see if he is when he and his men break out ofprison.Spanish lose 25 men; 200 more are captured; Aztecs lose 0.

10 11 Cortez: The meeting passes off peacefully. Later you and your men kill10,000 nobles at the religious feast.Montezuma: The meeting passes of peacefully. Later Cortez and hismen kill 10,000 nobles at the religious feast.Spanish lose 0 men; Aztecs lose 10,000.

10 12 Cortez: You and your Spanish soldiers are taken prisoner and have toescape from the prison, which you do eventually.Montezuma: Racked with doubts over imprisoning a god, you relax theguard on the prison and make it possible for the Spanish to escape.They take refuge in some of your palaces.Spanish lose 5 men; Aztecs lose 10.

Spanish: Round 4

The processions of Cortez’s soldiers and Montezuma’s nobles have met on thecauseway to Tenochtitlan: a historic moment. Montezuma recognizes Cortez as a godand surrenders authority to him. The Spanish still worry that they are outnumbered.They ask to be present at a religious ritual, and kill almost 10,000 victims. Theytake Montezuma hostage and he later dies. The remaining noble leader, Cuauhtemoc,orders the palaces where the Spanish are living to be surrounded.

Cortez:

Do you:

13. Take advantage of a moonless night and torrential rain, flee from the palaces.Meet up with rebel tribes who are now on your side. Prepare an attack onTenochtitlan?

14. Wait for a better moment to escape, lose time and some of the support of therebels tribes?

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Aztecs Round 4

Cuauhtemoc:

Do you?

15. Attempt to capture the Spanish with Aztec soldiers, failing to enlist thesupport of other tribes?

16. Persuade some of the rebel tribes to come back to the side of the Aztecs andgo after the escaped Spanish men.

Consequences sheet: Round 4

Spanish Aztec

13 15 Cortez: You make a successful escape, but with heavy losses andharassment from the Aztecs. Fighting bravely, you open up the route toTlaxcala and with the tribes’ support, prepare an attack on Tenochtitlan.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): You try to stop the Spanish escaping and killmany of them but the rest get away.Spanish lose 100 men; Aztecs lose 50.

13 16 Cortez: You make a successful escape, but with heavy losses andharassment from the Aztecs. Fighting bravely, you open up theroute to Tlaxcala and with the tribes’ support, prepare an attack onTenochtitlan.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): You try to stop the Spanish escaping and killmany of them but the rest get away. One tribe comes back to theAztec side.Spanish lose 100 men; Aztecs lose 100, but gain 3,000 more soldiers.

14 15 Cortez: You make a successful escape, but with very heavy losses andharassment from the Aztecs. Fighting bravely, you open up the route toTlaxcala and with some of the the tribes’ support, prepare an attack onTenochtitlan.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): You try to stop the Spanish escaping and killmany of them but the rest get away.Spanish lose 100 men; Aztecs lose 50.

14 16 Cortez: You make a successful escape, but with very heavy losses andharassment from the Aztecs. Fighting bravely, you open up the route toTlaxcala and with some of the the tribes’ support, prepare an attack onTenochtitlan.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): You try to stop the Spanish escaping and killmany of them but the rest get away. One tribe comes back to theAztec side.Spanish lose 150 men; Aztecs lose 100, but gain 3,000 more soldiers.

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Spanish: Round 5

The rebel tribes believe that Cortez will save them from the ruling Aztecs and restoretheir power. They do not realize that Cortez represented in some ways a more mightypower: that of Spain and Christianity. Cortez has to decide what to do with the helpof the rebel tribes. At this point he gains 5,000 more rebel soldiers.

Cortez:

Do you:

17. Retreat to the coastal port of Velacruz and send to Cuba for more troops?

18. Gather several thousand native rebels, construct a fleet of small ships andlaunch a siege of Tenochtitlan?

Aztecs: Round 5

Cuauhtemoc:

Do you:

19. Send your men after Cortez to finish off him and the Spanish threat once andfor all?

20. Seek help of the remaining rebel tribes loyal to the empire and prepare todefend Tneochtitlan?

Consequences sheet: Round 3

Spanish Aztec

17 19 Cortez: Velasquez, angry that Cortez has gone so far beyond his originalmission, refuses to send any help.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): Your men follow the Spanish to the coast but fallill with an epidemic of illness brought by the Spanish to the southernAmerican continent.Spanish lose 10 men; Aztecs lose 3,000.

17 20 Cortez: Velasquez, angry that Cortez has gone so far beyond his originalmission, refuses to send any help.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): you prepare for the siege only to lose manypeople in the epidemic of illness.Spanish lose 10 men; Aztecs lose 3,000.

18 19 Cortez: For three months besiege Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs are eventuallydefeated by the repeated attacks, famine and illness. Cuauhtemoc is takenprisoner and hanged on the pretext of a plot.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): Your men set off to follow the Spanish but see agreat army of natives waiting to attack, the retreat to the city and arebesieged.Spanish lose 50 men; Aztecs lose 10,000.

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18 20 Cortez: For three months besiege Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs are eventu-ally defeated by the repeated attacks, famine and illness. Cuauhtemocis taken prisoner and hanged on the pretext of a plot. The Spanish nowrule Mexico and the course of world history has changed.Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs): you prepare for the siege only to lose manypeople in the epidemic of illness. You are taken prisonerSpanish lose 50 men; Aztecs lose 10,000.

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Index

abbeys, visits to 74–7, 80, 83abstract concepts 24, 88accessibility of historical evidence 27–8accommodation to new experience 23‘acting skills’ 28–30activities at museums, galleries and sites 74–8adaptation, concept of 174Alexander, R.J. 87, 138All our Futures (report, 1999) 6–7, 11–12Andretti, K. 34Anglo-Saxon place-names 71Anglo-Saxon settlement 117–20archaeology 42–3, 152Archimedes 11Argos catalogue 60artefacts

context of 42–5educational value of 31–5handling of 74linking with subjects other than history 45looking at 37sources of 35, 152specific activities making use of 35–41

assessment of pupils 155–9assimilation of new experience 23Athelstan 1, 80–2audio tapes 150‘Australia’ (ballad) 134–6authenticity of historical sources 27autobiographies 50Aztec history 113–17, 121

bag activity 35–6Bage, G. 41, 155ballads 125–6, 135Beetlestone, F. 7, 12–13behaviour management in class 102–3, 126Bellamy, P. 89–92Bennett, Alan 103, 106bisociative thinking 8blocked situations 11, 13

board games 4–5, 120–1Boudica 165–7browsing 152–3Bruner, J.S. 24–5, 59, 85, 124–5Burt, C. 8

card indexes 40Carter, Howard 88Cassell’s Book of Household

Management 2CD-ROMs 152–3challenge for children 26charters, historical 50chronology 143–5, 149, 155citizenship education 92, 96, 110classroom discourse 138–42clipboard questionnaires and quizzes 73–4, 84‘Cluedo’ 120Cockburn, A.D. 19Collingwood, R.G. 21Collins, Pauline 106Collins (publishing house) 60complex learning 5computer games 117, 121–2computers, use of 152–5concept webs 147–8, 159, 171concepts in history 17–18, 24conceptual change theory 23–5‘consequences’ game 36–8context

of historical artefacts 42–5of historical documents 47

Cooper, H. 15Cortez, Hernando 112–17, 121Counsell, C. 139creative teaching 5–6, 11–14, 174–6creativity in general 6–14, 23

definition of 7–8‘Cultures’ (computer game) 121curriculum 15–17; see also

National Curriculum

189

Ind

exdatabases 153–4Dean, J. 26, 33–4, 139, 147, 153, 174Deary, T. 104decision-making

by children 117, 154by teachers 149

depth of study 26–7diaries as historical documents 57Dickens, Charles 86digital cameras, use of 152discussion in class 138documents, historical 46–52, 57–8

reading of 47–9types 47use in teaching 49–52

Drake, Sir Francis 3–5, 14, 73, 121drama 98, 102–12, 126, 147, 152, 158

techniques of 103–5value of 102–3

drawing activities 38dress, study of 126–8Durbin, G. 32–3

Elizabeth I 68English Heritage 68eye contact 86, 98, 103, 126

‘feely bag’ activity 41Fines, J. 21–2, 26, 48, 61–2, 66, 74, 87, 103–4, 116,

139, 171–2folk dancing 128, 133folk music and folk-song 125–6, 136formative assessment 156–7, 159forum theatre 104frames of reference 9, 13–14, 16, 23, 30‘freeze frame’ technique 104, 126

‘Game of Life’ 120games 112, 117–21, 146, 154gaol records 52–6Gardner, H. 125generic teaching approaches 138–9Great Fire of London 57Greek Gazette 162, 164, 170‘Greensleeves’ 129–31‘grid activity’ 36Gruzinski, S. 115guitar accompaniments 126

Hardy, F.D. 62Hardy, Thomas 86Haydn, T. 144–5, 152–3Henry VIII 50–2, 66, 80, 104, 130–1, 176Hertford County records 53–6Hexter, J.H. 21–2, 25, 28, 86, 139, 153history

attitudes towards the subject 19corruption of subject discipline 19definitions of 21

‘map’ of 20–1, 157, 158nature of the subject 17–22, 156principles for teaching of 25–8seen as a process 21seen as an umbrella discipline 15, 85, 124

‘The Horses Bransle’ (tune) 131–2, 137Hoskins, W.G. 69hot-seating 103, 106, 110Howerd, Frankie 106humour in teaching 30hunger marches 107–10

iconic representation 59, 105–6images, working with 154imagination, historical 18, 22, 84–5, 151information and communication technology

(ICT) 122, 150–3integration between subjects 16–17interactive whiteboards 155internet resources 60–1, 153–4

jokes 8–11‘Jolly Postman’ books 101‘Journey through Britain’ (game) 120–1

Kingston, P. 109Koestler, A. 8–11, 13–14, 23, 174

labelling activities 38Landmark Series of videos 151landscape 69Lark Rise to Candleford 2leaning objectives 5, 30learning theory 23–5, 124–5Lee, Laurie 24letters as documents 50–1, 131logico-scientific mode of thought 86Logo 117

maps 70–1, 104, 110Mayhew, Henry 30, 135medical reports 49–50memoirs 50mental representations of the world 24–5, 117,

125Mester, C.S. 28–30‘Monopoly’ 120multiple intelligences, theory of 125museums 35, 39–40, 43, 61, 74music 123–37

value in teaching of history 124–5‘My young man’ (song) 126–8

narrative mode of ordering experience 85–7,125–6

National Advisory Committee on Creative andCultural Education (NACCCE) 6–8, 11–12

National Curriculum 16, 21, 46–7, 70, 109, 121,125, 140–8 passim, 156, 160